Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design

by Donald C. Gause, Gerald M. Weinberg

Finally, here's an innovative book that gives you the understanding you need to give people the solutions they want.

The collaborative team of Gause and Weinberg tells how you can assure the requirements are right — before the product is designed.

Written by two authorities in the field, this book is a collection of ideas developed, refined, and tested during their more than sixty combined years of work with both large and small organizations.

The techniques formulated in Exploring Requirements are not merely theoretical; they have been used effectively to develop a wide range of products — from computer software to furniture, books, and buildings.

Systems analysts and anyone involved with the challenges of the requirements process will greatly benefit from this book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Design, Business, Technology, Programming, Engineering, Software

299 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

Reviews

[Henriette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative book. The writing style is similar to other Weinberg books, so even though the subject matter is serious, in my case work related it is an easy and enjoyable read. The summaries at at the end of each chapter form a useful cliff notes version that I plan to return to.

[Richp · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not an actively bad book. It has some good stuff, especially about thinking outside the box, even about an inside the box problem. But, for a heavyweight subject, it is quite lightweight despite the middleweight package.

The authors were consultants at the time they put this together, not lead (or rank and file) requirements developers. It shows not only by the artificial examples, but especially by the repetitive and blatant references to one of the co-author's other books (as opposed to many of the excellent books in the bibliography). This is sales pitch more than a text. I'm not ticked off myself. I only paid a buck for a barely used edition and I have the time since I am retired. But I did requirements analysis and development for a number of years, I find reason to suspect the previous owner of my copy was stuck with this as a course text, and I think she got much less than she paid for.

[Omar Trejo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good basic overview of requirement exploring techniques.

[James Boling]

I confess I have not been disciplined enough to forge through much of this. What I have read of it has shown potential and this is an important topic for IT work of course.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can't tell right away, but almost immediately you know this book is dated. Ignoring the amusing clip art, the fact that the author has to spell out "electronic mail" is a big clue.

Nevertheless, there is some use to this, but much of it is elementary. The advantage to the book is that it helps you check yourself and your team for bad patterns. Much of the content is stuff you probably assume you are doing right, but that it does not hurt to check.

Skip to the "generating ideas" section, however, if you want a good laugh - there may be a suggestion involving silly hats. *sigh*

[Nynke Fokma · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Anna Epishcheva · Rating 3 out of 5]

First 100 pages are good for structuring that you already know, but next 160 are dated, last paragraph also worth to read. Good book for speed-reading

[Carl Klutzke · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read this book, it opened my eyes and began a change in my career. I've reread it a couple of times since then. Highly informative and eminently readable.

[Drew Mathers]

A collection of methods for requirements analysis with an emphasis on identifying missing requirements.