Writing Requirements for IT — Simply Put!

Effective Requirements Reduce Project Failures

Writing requirements is one of the core competencies for anyone in an organization responsible for defining future Information Technology (IT) applications. However, nearly every independently executed root-cause analysis of IT project problems and failures in the past half-century have identified "misunderstood or incomplete requirements" as the primary cause. This has made writing requirements the bane of many projects.

The real problem is the subtle differences between "understanding" someone else’s requirement and "sharing a common understanding" with the author.

"Writing Requirements for IT — Simply Put!" gives you a set of 4 simple rules that will make your requirement statements more easily understood by all target audiences. The focus is to increase the "common understanding" between the author of a requirement and the solution providers (e.g., in-house or outsourced IT designers, developers, analysts, and vendors).

The rules we present in this book will reduce the failure rate of projects suffering from poor requirements. Regardless of your job title or role, if you are tasked with communicating your future needs to others, this course is for you.

How to Get the Most Out of this Course?

To maximize the learning effect, you will have optional, online exercises to assess your understanding of each presented technique. Lessons prefaced with the phrase “Exercise” contain an exercise that we have prepared to give you an opportunity to try the presented technique yourself.

These exercises are optional and they do not “test” your knowledge in the conventional sense. Their purpose is to demonstrate the use of the technique more real-life than our explanations can supply. We hope you enjoy them and that they make it easier for you to apply the techniques in real life.