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From: Matthew E. <men...@me...> - 2002-02-19 18:58:18
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<br><br>
Hi Geoff-<br><br>
(i hope you don't mind my lack-of-capitalization for informal letters...i
find in can write faster this way.)<br><br>
Geoff writes:<br>
> I am currently working on a project that is <br>
> suffering from poor requirements management, and since I am having
to lead <br>
> the way out of the s**t, I am very keen to develop something that
will assist <br>
> me in future.<br><br>
you're not alone. i have received several inquiries from people,
and most of them have been "beaten down" by the
software-project gods. i take that you have, too. if so, i
share the pain.<br><br>
i don't want to mislead you though; i doubt that our work will lead to
anything usable within the next 6 months...and this number is just a
guess. (i define "usable" as providing a project/product
manager with reasonably confidence to use the tool on an actual,
money-making project.) so i simply warn you in advance that if
you're looking for short-term help with your existing stuff, this project
(reqsman) probably will not be your best bet. please let me know if
you are looking for this kind of help, and i can give you some pointers
('cause i'm already in this sort of position).<br><br>
you might also want to look at other projects like
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/neorms/">NEORMS</a>,
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/reqmaster/">ReqMaster</a>,
and<br>
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/projectarchit/">The Project
Architect</a>, although there doesn't appear to be any more activity
going on for these than there are for reqsman. i suspect that the
reqsman approach may have a broader perspective and be less tied to
software technologies than these other projects...but i'm only
speculating.<br><br>
<br>
> I have some ideas about what is required and how to implement it but
they <br>
> haven't progressed all that far yet.<br><br>
i feel implementation fundamentals are important, like avoiding
dependence on technologies (like Windows) unless high-level reasons call
for it. (for what it's worth, i'm a Unix-lover, too, and disdain
Windows...but use Windows because i'm in many cases artificially
constrained to do so.) i also feel that it's quite feasible to
provide multiple user perspectives (ie, interfaces and modes) to the same
services and data served by software.<br><br>
my main concern at this stage is to identify (and have development
parties agree upon) what type of user(s) we want to serve now, and
possibly discuss what users/needs we might want to serve in the future (i
believe the targeted user-type set may grow over time--and i speak in
terms of years). i then want to discover our users' goals, and
direct our efforts to best serving those user goals. i also find
that rarely does a user goal have much to do with underlying
implementation technology. fyi: i've found Alan Cooper's
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672316498/qid=1014135470/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3058708-6447012">"The
Inmates are Running the Asylum"</a> (as well as his associated site
at <a href="http://cooper.com/">http://cooper.com</a>) provides
interesting guidance for this kind of thought.<br><br>
throughout development of this kind of stuff, i suspect that user goals
may stay stable while the tools and tasks used and executed to reach
these goals may change dramatically over time. to this end i expect
that, if this becomes a bona fide project and actually takes off with
users, the internal guts and implementation may change quite a bit over
time. the key for me is to make sure to track these user goals and
high-level "business" requirements.<br><br>
> I'm quite interested in taking this somewhere, but would like to see
a few <br>
> more details before I commit. <br><br>
more things to come. i recommend joining the reqsman mailing
list<br>
(req...@li...; see the
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=10327">reqsman email lists
page</a> for more info). i copy the list with this email.<br><br>
-Matt<br><br>
<br><br>
At 2/19/2002 06:16 AM, Geoff Glasson wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Matt,<br><br>
I'm quite interested in taking this somewhere, but would like to see a
few <br>
more details before I commit. I am currently working on a project
that is <br>
suffering from poor requirements management, and since I am having to
lead <br>
the way out of the s**t, I am very keen to develop something that will
assist <br>
me in future.<br><br>
I have some ideas about what is required and how to implement it but they
<br>
haven't progressed all that far yet. For instance, I am a UNIX
devotee and <br>
don't want to develop something specific to Windows, nor do I want to
limit <br>
the user interface to a specific window manager / toolkit ( I'm a KDE fan
). <br>
So if I were to build something like this myself, it would be Java based,
<br>
perhaps even applet based running off an SQL database. I think that
this <br>
would give the project the most flexibilty and means that it could be
used <br>
across multiple platforms.<br><br>
I am quite willing to discuss options with you or anyone else for that
<br>
matter, and help put together the requirements for this
project.<br><br>
Regards...Geoff<br><br>
On Tue, 19 Feb 2002 06:55, Matthew England wrote:<br>
> To: gla...@ii..., nh...@us...<br>
><br>
> Per your inquiries about Requirements Manager (reqsman.sf.net), I've
posted<br>
> a the following note:<br>
><br>
>
<<a href="http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=1489284" eudora="autourl">http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=1489284</a>><br>
><br>
> Hopefully more to come soon.<br>
><br>
> -Matt<br><br>
-- <br>
Geoff Glasson<br>
gla...@ii...</blockquote></html>
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