Continuing my explorations in the richness and diversity of the Dorset House library, I have put my fingers on Dorset's latest jewel by Alan M. Davis' titled "Just Enough Requirements Management, where software development meets marketing". As always with Dorset's titles, this has been a very enriching and eye-opening reading experience. A must read for people aiming at respectable requirements management responsibilities! Here is one memorable quote from the book, which I think somehow illustrates the nature of its provocative content: "If you believe that you know the requirements better than the customer, you are part of the problem, not the solution."

My 10-horseshoes review follows (also available at Javaranch.com):

The primary goal of an information system is to provide a solution to a given business problem. The development of such systems usually involves people from at least two sectors, such as the IT sector as the solution provider and the business sectors for which the software solution is being devised. Since the needs are usually expressed by the customer, it becomes immediately clear that one of the most critical phases of the software development lifecycle is the requirements management phase. Failing to efficiently manage that phase can have disastrous consequences as the implemented solution might not correctly fulfill the customer's needs.

Alan M. Davis, an award-winning professor, author and entrepreneur, contributes very useful and successfully applied requirement management techniques for effectively performing and managing requirements elicitation, triage, specification and change. Davis argues that one of the main points to focus on when managing requirements is to allow computer-savvy IT actors and computer agnostic business actors to understand each other by using a language that can be understood by both parties and that can be easily adapted to the relative complexity of the problem at hand and to the available resources for solving that problem.

If you repeatedly find yourself having troubles managing requirements for your information system development projects, or if you have a hard time communicating with your marketing or business departments or even with your customers, this book will undoubtedly make your day. If successfully applied, Davis’ techniques will definitely have a highly positive impact on both your budgets and the quality of the delivered solutions.