Requirements

Tutorials

MB Software Requirements Fundamentals for BAs, Testers, and Developers NEW

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

You deal with software requirements all the time. Whether you are a developer in an agile environment, an analyst who identifies and documents requirements for plan-driven development, a software designer who studies requirements as the basis for agile development, a tester who employs or often must discover requirements as the foundation of test cases, or a technical user who describes your needs to development, you need the right approaches and skills to develop and interpret software requirements.

MD Specification by Example: Mastering Agile Testing

Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep up with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall verification process―finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace a “test last” mentality with “specification by example.” Practice “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins. Learn to switch from tests as verification to tests as specification and guide development with concrete examples written in the language of your business.

ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking—and More NEW

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and, instead, focus only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into test-driven thinking that is meaningful to testers, developers, product owners, and others. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing.

MM The Role of the Agile Business Analyst

Steve Adolph, Blue Agility

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 1:00pm

The business analyst (BA) role seems conspicuously absent from most agile methods. Does agile make the BA role obsolete? Certainly not! But how does a BA exploit the short cycle times and collaborative nature of agile methods? Drawing from the principles of lean product development flow, Steve Adolph introduces five principles for the agile BA—Open the Channels, Chart the Flow, Generate Flow, Lean Out the Flow, and Bridge the Flow. As a communicator, the BA must Open the Channels and Chart the Flow to align all stakeholders.

TH Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects.

TL Get the Requirements Right―the First Time NEW

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

One group—customers, users, and business—need a software system to help them work more efficiently or make more money, but they don’t know how to build it. Another group—software developers and testers—know how to build the system, but they don’t know what it is supposed to do. Bridging this gap is where requirements—the work products describing the system accurately and concisely while at the same time not missing important customer and user needs—are essential.

TQ Product Owner Imperatives for Championing Agile Projects NEW

Paul Reed, EBG Consulting

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Engaged and passionate product owners balance strategic and tactical activities to ensure that the right product is built—and built right. Yet how do these product owners guide planning toward longer-term goals while also ensuring that requirements are sufficiently understood for development and delivery? Join Paul Reed as he shares techniques for setting context and collaboratively establishing a shared understanding of requirements. Discover methods to envision the product and identify the stakeholders and their value considerations.

TS Specifying Non-Functional Requirements NEW

John Terzakis, Intel

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Non-functional requirements present unique challenges for authors, reviewers, and testers. Non-functional requirements often begin as vague concepts such as “the software must be easy to install” or “the software must be intuitive and respond quickly.” As written, these requirements are not testable. Definitions of easy, intuitive, and quickly are open to interpretation and dependent on the reader’s experiences. In order to be testable, non-functional requirements must be quantifiable and measurable.

Concurrent Sessions

AW8 Crafting Smaller User Stories: Examples and Exercises

Stephen Frein, Comcast

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 1:30pm

Agile development techniques generally emphasize frequent iterations. But even after adopting agile values, methods, and ceremonies, many organizations struggle to make such iterations work in practice. These organizations inevitably wrestle with agile rhythms until they learn to break up their work into small user stories that will fit within short iterations and allow for fast feedback. Stephen Frein discusses the importance of small user stories and how crucial they are to finishing the stories within the iteration and avoiding a mini-waterfall inside an iteration.

AW12 Grooming the Backlog: Plan the Work, Work the Plan

Andy Berner, QSM, Inc.

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:45pm

Stories in the backlog must be ready to go in time to begin each sprint—priorities are set, stories are at the Goldilocks level of granularity (not too big, and not too small), and stakeholders are prepared to discuss the details. Getting the backlog ready and grooming it take serious consideration and work. You need to plan, budget for, and track this work. Andy Berner describes five key issues to consider in that planning.

AT10 Making Agile Work—with Eleven Product Owners

Neal Huffman, Apex Capital Corp.

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 1:30pm

Small companies that have been highly successful delivering software often struggle as they grow larger and their software needs to grow with them. They must learn to manage multiple technology platforms and multiple releases while dealing with the associated roadmaps and support plans. A small company experiencing phenomenal growth, Apex Capital has built four major platforms with two more coming online in 2014. Apex needed a way to consistently deliver software across each platform and communicate that to the respective user communities.