How to Improve Your Requirements with Tiny Stories

Presented at Project Summit * Business Analyst World in Philadelphia

Stop writing boring requirements! No matter how much you love them, they often get in the way of communicating. The secret to good communication isn't is writing more, it's in doing it differently. Instead of stale requirements you should tell tiny stories! During this presentation we will talk about writing requirements with little stories, sometimes known as Behavior Driven Development / BDD, Specification by Example, or Given-When-Then. (In the IIBA Agile Extension to the BABOK, it's called Get Real Using Examples.) The key isn't the many different names, it's about structuring your requirements based upon behavior and using this to ensure everyone from user - to - developer - to - stakeholder understands the functionality and goals. Come and learn about Tiny Stories and how they will help you keep your project on track.

Learning Objectives
1. Practice building requirements using the Given-When-Then structure.
2. Understand why it is important to use natural language & business terms.
3. Learn why scenarios add huge power to requirements and enable living requirement documentation.

Transcript

1. How to Improve Your Requirements with Tiny Stories
2. Jeffrey Davidson twitter: @JeffreyGoodReq blog: goodrequirements.com email: jeffrey@davidson.net
5. Pick a role §  Princess §  Fireman §  Singer §  Scientist
6. Pick a sidekick §  Cousin §  Pet §  Stuffed animal §  Talking bird
7. Pick an activity §  Walking §  Flying §  Having a picnic §  Shopping
8. Pick a place §  In the forest §  By the ocean §  On the roof §  In town
9. Pick 2 events §  You hear a loud roar §  Your sidekick chases a bird §  A furry monster walks up §  A horse asks for your help §  You shrink to 4” high
10. Pick a response §  Say “Not again!” §  Pull a biscuit out of your pocket §  Laugh §  Fall into a puddle
11. Once upon a time _________ and ________ were ________ in ________. As you were ________ they ________ and ________. Then you ________. role sidekick respond event activity event activity location
13. We can only consider a few things at a time.
14. 7 ± 2
15. 4 – 5
16. Intertwined things must be considered together
18. Complexity undermines understanding
20. What is a good requirement?
21. §  Valuable §  Concise §  Design-free §  Attainable §  Complete §  Consistent §  Unambiguous §  Verifiable §  Atomic §  Understandable
22. Clear, unambiguous definition of done
23. Value comes from understanding . . .
24. Value comes from understanding
25. There is no difference between requirements and understanding
26. Common understanding Stakeholder Analyst & UX Developer Tester User
27. Functional requirements are best understood . . . in context with actors, actions, and results
28. Functional requirements are best understood . . . as Stories
29. How Tiny Stories will save our broken Requirements
30. D A D D Y !
31. You & your condition Context What you do What you see Event Response When Given Then
32. Given is Personable
33. When is Actionable
34. Then is Visible
35. Behavior
36. Conversation
37. Misunderstanding Misunderstanding
38. “Hi, Grandma”
39. Design free
41. §  Origin & Destination §  Date §  Seats §  Name & credit card
42. §  Given: §  When: §  Then: §  Given: I want to fly to the Bahamas §  When: I select my travel city pair §  Then: I see the dates available
43. §  Given: I see the available travel dates §  When: I choose my travel date §  Then: I see how many seats are available
44. Examples …
45. Examples … are provable
46. Examples … amplify what we know
47. Examples … point out holes
49. Given: I have chosen a travel itinerary When: I submit my name and payment information Then: I see a confirmation #
50. Travel itinerary Origin Dest Pass Date Name Atlanta Bahamas 1 Apr 15, 2014 Lynn Submit Itinerary Payment confirmation Valid Good Display “Congratulations, Lynn. You are ready for your trip! Your confirmation numbers are NNNNNN” Conf# 000001 Then When Given
52. §  Multiple travelers §  Invalid itinerary §  Missing payment info §  Confirmation failure
53. Given: I have chosen a travel itinerary When: I submit my name and payment information Then: I see a confirmation #
54. Origin Dest Pass Date Name Atlanta Bahamas 1 Mar 15, 2014 Lynn Atlanta Bahamas 4 Mar 15, 2014 David Bahamas Atlanta 5 Mar 18, 2014 Diana Itinerary Payment confirmation Valid Good Valid Good Valid Failure Message Conf# Confirmation 000001 Confirmation 000002, 000003, 000004, 000005 “Please call” Then When Given
55. What’s happening?
56. How’d we get here?
57. Understanding
58. There is no difference between requirements and understanding
59. – – Given You & Your condition What you do What you see When Then
60. My Primary Sources "   Gojko Adzic BDD / Specification by Example gojko.net "   Liz Keogh BDD lunivore.com "   Dan North BDD & Crevasse of Doom dannorth.net
61. Share & Tell This is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike [CC BY 3.0] "  Please use it "  Please share it "  Please improve it "  As long as you credit me somewhere
62. How to Improve Your Requirements with Tiny Stories ® Jeffrey Davidson twitter: @JeffreyGoodReq blog: goodrequirements.com email: jeffrey@davidson.net ProjectSummit * BusinessAnalystWorld | Philadelphia, PA | April 7, 2014