"Al Davis takes for his subject the largely unexplored middle ground between
the requirements purists and the requirements cowboys. Since it's this middle
ground where real work gets done, his guidance is both useful and welcome."
—Tom
DeMarco, coauthor of Peopleware
Principal,
The Atlantic Systems Guild, systemsguild.com
"If you repeatedly find yourself having troubles managing
requirements for your information system development projects, or if you have
a hard time communicating with your marketing or business departments or even
with your customers, this book will undoubtedly make your day."
—Valentin
Crettaz
Val's Blog, javaranch.com
"No one else, perhaps, could take a long view of the passionate
arguments between traditionalists, formalists, and agile methods people, or of
the differing viewpoints of developers, managers, and marketing. . . .
".
. . it takes a light, informed, politically-skilful and industrially-informed
look at the problem of doing just enough. This is very timely, given the 'heavy
RE' versus 'agile methods' debate: and Davis succeeds in pointing out where the
balance lies. Davis writes in a fresh and engaging way, telling stories from his
long and varied experience as a consultant (and researcher).
"Davis
has come up with yet another good, practical book for industry."
—Ian
Alexander, Requirenautics Quarterly
http://i.f.alexander.users.btopenworld.com
"The writing style Davis uses equals a lecture series on requirements
management. He uses fictional and personal anecdotes to describe the ideas, which
makes for an easy learning experience. . . .
"Whether you
are already involved in requirements management or are just getting started, Just
Enough Requirements Management explains the process perfectly."
—Chris
A. Grady, StickyMinds.com Review
http://www.stickyminds.com
". . . the book does an outstanding job conveying best practices
and techniques for requirements management, provides definitions of key terms
throughout the book, and provides graphs to illustrate points, as well as diagrams
to provide further understanding of key concepts. . . .
"I
highly recommend this book!"
—Jim Tisch, PM
Boulevard Review
http://www.pmboulevard.com
"Thank you very much for this deghtful and well-written
book . . ."
—Christof Ebert, ALCATEL Network
Systems
"The book is about practice, not theory,
and Davis gives us the benefit of his long tenure in the field. . . .
"The
best things about Just Enough Requirements Management are that it is based
on experience, and it is honest. Davis tells it like he sees it. Sometimes he
even disagrees with things he said in his earlier books, based on lessons he learned
in the interim. He doesn't shy away from controversy, either. He dismisses agile
approaches to requirements as ineffective. And although he sees value in use cases
and scenario-based requirements, he regards them as a rather minor adjunct to
the traditional, declarative style of writing requirements.
"I
recommend this book to anyone who works with requirements. Although you might
not agree with everything Davis says, you should be able to glean something you
can use to improve your requirements management process."
—Jim
Heumann, The
Rational Edge
". . . Davis outlines a middle-of-the-road
approach based on capturing the user's requirements in natural language (where
any technical jargon would be that of the user vice that of the developer), and
listing all requirements (so that they can be 'managed').
". . . this book is all about balance, and is targeted for the vast majority
whose available resources are less that their estimated needs; Alan offers some
good advice on how to balance the two."
—Joe
Saur, ACM Engineering Notes
". . . presents
a 'good enough" approach to requirements management. This approach strikes
a balance between the 'no requirements document' approach favored by agile developers
(who tend to rely on resident customers/users instead of documentation), and the
very formal requirements specification favored by academics (which tends to lead
to very precise requirements that resist change). . . .
"This
is a very common-sense book, where Davis leads us to some very non-traditional
software engineering conclusions! . . . If you care about the software engineering
subject of requirements, this book is a must read."
—Robert
L. Glass, The
Software Practitioner
