Features vs. Use Cases vs. Requirements

June 13, 2012 By

In other news, here’s a question I often get:

Hey Michael, What is the difference between:

  • Features
  • Use Cases, and
  • Requirements?

Here’s my answer. Disclaimer: This is not a universally accepted answer, and you may find other answers on the internet that directly contradict mine. But that’s totally fine, as you and I know they’re all wrong and I’m correct – Yes?!

Onto the answer…

Feature vs. Use Case vs. Requirement

You see, it all starts with user needs. After all, the goal of building (or enhancing) a product is to meet the needs of our users.

  • The other goal is to impress our boss’ Portugese water dog – but that is the subject of another post, on my secret blog! 😉

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Requirements Management Basics, Use Cases

7 Requirements Management Tools

May 25, 2012 By

I’m writing this post to provide a shortlist of requirements management tools – i.e. tools to capture and manage requirements for your projects/products in a structured, collaborative fashion.

There are a large number of requirements tools available in the market, too large to fit into any list like this! So, this post will focus only on tools I personally have good experience with, or have heard very good things from close friends in the industry…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Requirements Management Tools

What is a Requirements Management Plan?

May 9, 2012 By

In this quick post, I’d like to define the term “Requirements Management Plan”.

Simply put, “Requirements Management Plan” refers to:

A document (or set of documents) that define how the requirements for a software project will be managed.

Requirement management plan outlines the guidelines for creating requirements documents, types and attributes of requirements to be included in such documents, as well as the processes for change control and requirements traceability.

Here’s some more info about requirements management plans.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Requirements Documents, Requirements Management Basics

Free Open Source Requirements Management Tools

April 23, 2012 By

I’m often asked “Are there any free, open source requirements management tools?”

This question is often asked by friends whose companies are using tools like Word, wikis or bug trackers to manage requirements.

In this post, I will list a few free requirements management software tools – and discuss the pros and cons of such tools. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Requirements Management Tools

Requirements Document – Types of Requirements Documents & What They Mean

April 11, 2012 By

In my previous post I discussed different types of software requirements and how they are used. I covered five different types of requirements.

In this post, I will walk you through the different types of requirements document and what they mean.

Before I jump into it, I gotta tell you – there are numerous types of “requirements document” out there, we’re just going to cover the most popular ones in this post! Okay, let us get going… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Requirements Documents
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