Functionality Reference

[Chris Woodruff]

I would like to know what sources (books, article, papers) could be used for reference and functional requirements.  I have the "A Guide to the Project management Body of Knowledge" (PMI), "Software Project Survival Guide" (M$ Press), and "Debugging the Development Process" (M$ Press) that I have started rereading to use for reference.  Does anyone have any other suggestions.

[Frank V. Castellucci]

The PMI references are a good start. I have recently been re-committed to starting with good requirements before doing anything else. The approach I have been taking is by stating the stakeholders in the system and driving the use cases for each stakeholder.

I prepared a stakeholder list for comment on the sourceforge staffs request to define their architecture, and in that you may have the same direction you might want to take a look:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=34145

But, a good grounding in requirement engineering is :

"Requirements Engineering - A Good Partice Guide" Ian Sommerville & Pete Sawyer - Wiley - ISBN 0-471-97444-7

[Chris Woodruff]

Thanks for the book refence and the link to the SF architecture talk.  I will try to find the book.  Good points were brought up.  Have you ever read "Extreme Programming Explained"?  While I don't agree with all the viewpoints I do think they have soem valid points.

[Marcin Swiatek]

I think, the guy makes brilliant observations. But draws wrong conclusion from them. Well, at least partially wrong.

[Simon Emmett]

The IEEE stuff can be good, along with the NASA stuff. I know McDonald (Surving Your First Software Proj)
draws heavily from both of these.

Additionally his Code Complete book has some interesting stuff on PM etc

Simon