Designing the Requirements: Building Applications that the User Wants and Needs [Mīkstie vāki]

End users are often dissatisfied with IT applications. Often, the problem isn't that those applications were badly implemented: rather, they may be performing the wrong task, or doing the right thing clumsily. Why do these failures happen? Often, the cause can be traced directly to problems with the way requirements were captured upfront.Designing the Requirements: Building Applications that the User Wants and Needswill help you get requirements right, by taking a professional, design-focused approach to them, as you build deeper, stronger relationships with all your project stakeholders.

Leading requirements consultant and software designer Chris Britton shows how to systematically detect inconsistencies, incompleteness, poor usability, and misalignment with business goals upstream, long before your development organization starts implementing the solution.

Britton also shows application designers and developers how to give stakeholders and users the guidance they need to clarify true needs, concerns, and tradeoffs - rather than simply giving them what they say they want, without adequate exploration. Just as those who are commissioning a new building need professionals' wisdom on avoiding floods and preparing for earthquakes, so too do software customers need your wisdom on software requirements and design: this book shows how to develop and offer that wisdom in ways that deepen and strengthen your relationships with every project stakeholder: end users, business managers and analysts, and other IT project teams.

• Part I explains why establishing requirements is a true design exercise, and illuminating the unique requirements and design problems of large applications.
• Part II explains how to capture high-value knowledge about what users want; why the business chose this project; constraints the society places on your design; challenges of integration with other IT projects and infrastructure; and key issues in project control and development.
• Part III addresses program design for functionality, security, performance, and the full program lifecycle (including testing, debugging, monitoring, and control)

Designing the Requiremens helps you systematically bridge the gaps between IT and your business, so your designers and developers can build software that really will delight the people who use and pay for it.