Mary Gorman Says Agile Requirements Not an Oxymoron

Mary Gorman speaking on Agile Requirements: Not an Oxymoron

Requirements are the basis for product development.

So why is Agile requirements not an oxymoron?

Mary had us do an exercise that helped elicit from the group a current state of how people feel about requirements practices for traditional and Agile.

Software development has a lot of interdependencies and complexities.

“Agile requirements planning – We need to look at value first and continually prioritize.”

Agile analysis roadmap:

◦Product – Big-view (Product roadmap – Shaped by the vision, value, goals, and objectives)
◦Release – Pre-view (Product Backlog and Release Plan)
◦Iteration/WIP – Now-view (Iteration Backlog)
Agile development effort:

◦Requirements need to be just enough to begin
◦Requirements need to be testable with user acceptance criteria
◦Requirements have to have a definition of “done”
Ways to visualize work:

◦Data
◦States
◦Rules
◦Interfaces
◦User acceptance tests
Agile requirements and delivering:

Think of sashimi when delivering – Small clean units, bite sized requirements that are as fresh as possible. Delivered immediately and consumed. – Really like this analogy!

Inspect and adapt:

◦The goal is to learn what went well but also adapt and improve as we go forward.
Requirements development & management:

◦Elicit
◦Analyze
◦Specify
◦Validate

In summary, we need smart documentation. Doing smaller chunks of work and working closely with the Product Owner and being ok with incompleteness in total requirements. During the release the requirements are done in full.

So, do we have an oxymoron when it comes to Agile requirements? No way!

Originally posted by www.agilescout.com