Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.27 Do Requirements Need to Be Captured in Single
“Shall Statements”?
This question often arises in Agile organizations that do requirements using
user stories or use cases. First, there is no expected practice in the CMMI with
respect to “shall statements.” The same questions concerning the management
of requirements through the life cycle, and traceability, need to be asked. In
many Agile organizations, user stories or use cases are often found to help the
developers initially understand the requirements and to develop the test cases.
Once these test cases are established, the cases themselves often become the
agreed-to requirements with the customers. If your customer agrees to this
approach, this may suffice to achieve the intent of the requirements manage-
ment specific practices related to requirements change management and
traceability. This is an example where an organization needs to ask a number
of “what if” questions related to future potential changes and possible conse-
quences before making such decisions. Other good questions to ask at this
time related to the way your organization currently operates include:
Is there a problem in the organization with respect to Requirements Manage-
ment?
Do customers ever come back and challenge an earlier decision with respect
to a requirement change?
Nothing in the CMMI says that a managed test document cannot meet the
intent of managing requirements. Asking these types of questions that natu-
rally result when using the CMMI model will often lead to very good
discussions in your TWGs that help an organization understand its own
processes better and where some process modifications could be of benefit.
4.28 Formalizing Informality
LESSON 5
Yo u c a n “ f o r m a l i z e ” i n f o r m a l i t y.
One of the greatest achievements with BOND was our close attention to their
culture and maintaining it as they grew. As we added the necessary process
formality to prepare them for both the organization's continued growth and
