Managing and Sizing Functional Requirements

The ability to clearly define user requirements is critical to the overall success of many software projects. You need effective requirements development and management skills and processes to identify, describe, and record the functions requested by end users. With these in place you have the information necessary to assess project complexity and make reasonable size and effort estimates. David Herron describes reliable requirements gathering and documentation techniques including context diagrams, use cases, and mind maps. He discusses function point analysis as a software sizing methodology used by leading edge companies. These techniques, together with the associated tools and templates, provide you with the elements you need to more effectively develop, manage, and measure software requirements.

• Sizing functional requirements for project planning
• Diagramming techniques for documenting and clarifying functional requirements
• The functional value and complexity of the requirements using Function Points