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> On a personal level I have a difficult time with this. My
> brain wants to
> see the backwards traceability of the functional requirements to the
> business requirements, not FR to a project manager's whim.
>
> - Jim
So sad. A couple of my jobs have been to reverse engineer software and
whatnot to derive business requirements. I think that reverse engineering
is the stupidest thing that a department has had to pay somebody to do. If
business requirements were in place before development, then development
would not have followed the ad hoc mishap that it did that required a
manager to hire a writer/analyst to come in, take more time than the project
should have required if it was done right in the beginning, and document
what the software or whatnot was supposed to do before it went awry.
I was once given a document that was nothing more than ramblings about a
concept of a system and I was told to document the business requirements for
the system. "Well what part of this system is in place?" "We have
programmers working on that and they won't discuss the system, but they gave
us these screen shots of the planned GUI." "Well what business requirements
or documentation 'inspired' this conceptual document?" "This lawsuit. Use
this lawsuit to develop the business requirements and tie it in to the
conceptual document." "Huh?"
I agree that the development of business requirements should proceed
functional requirements and system development, but getting the fact of the
importance of the step into the heads of people that do not understand
development in general, can be quite a daunting task. So... sad.
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