Previously I had pondered about techniques to improve requirements analysis. That's why I read a recent Doctor Dobb's Report article on this very topic. To start you need analysts that have skill. This is a tall order to fill. Then you need to make sure you have the right tools. Well we have IBM Rational ReqPro. So we should be good.The analysts need to identify the business objectives. I know this is sorely lacking for many of our requirements. Often time nobody on the team understands why we are implementing the changes. We also must determine who can speak for the customer. This gets difficult when we have multiple customers that we work for. There is a sponsor, some executives, system acceptance, and different business divisions.
Use cases are a good tool. But they do not solve everything. The analysts need to get down into the functional requirements. Often times our analysts struggle with the business requirements. In that scenarios, there is no chance to do functional requirements well if you are stuck at the business level. You should also do some testing of the requirements themselves to see if there are any holes.
I think I should pass this article to our requirements analysis team. The problem might be the normal one. They are too busy to do anything other than write stuff down that the customer is saying.
