The Art of Requirements Triage

42 Computer The Art of Requirements Triage I n meeting rooms of development organizations worldwide, a familiar scene plays out: Marketing personnel say, " The new release must provide feature X in eight months or we might as well not even build it. " System developers respond, " If we build feature X into the next release, we'll need 12 months to deliver it. " This exchange has two possible outcomes: One, developers bend under the pressure and agree to an impossible schedule. The product is delivered late, and the company fails to meet its forecasts. Two, marketing personnel bend under the pressure and agree to a less-than-satisfactory product. The product is delivered on time but to an uninterested market, and the company again fails to meet its forecasts. More and more companies are feeling this requirements versus resources tension. Driven by an increasingly competitive market, they attempt to add features and compress schedules for the delivery of every product. The result is often a complete mis-match of requirements and resources, resulting in products that fail to satisfy customer needs. Medical personnel must deal with similar considerations when treating victims of a disaster—a practice dubbed triage. They systematically categorize victims into three groups: those who will die whether treated or not, those who will resume normal lives whether treated or not, and those for whom medical treatment may make a significant difference. Each group requires a different strategy. The first group receives palliative care, the second group waits for treatment, and the third requires some ranking in light of available resources. As new victims appear, personnel must repeat the categorization. Determining what requirements a product will satisfy follows a similar triage process. In the first group are requirements that the next baseline clearly must satisfy. In the second are requirements that the next baseline clearly need not satisfy. In the third group are requirements that the product could incorporate, but that the development team must first carefully weigh against available resources. Again, each group requires a different strategy: Put the candidate features in the product, put them in a bin for consideration in the next release, or group them by priority on the basis of available resources. As new requirements appear, new priorities are established, and the team revisits the categories. Triage—the process of determining which requirements a product should satisfy given the time and resources available—comprises three main activities: …