Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Wednesday 19 December 2007, 6:33 PM
Requirements gap: real or perceived?
That said, the Aussies are fiercely proud of their own home grown software successes. So, hitting my inbox overnight I see news from an enterprise modeling software provider called Holocentric, who has released the first (so they say) business process modeling solution specifically built for system requirements & fulfillment.
This technology is supposed to bridge the "requirements gap" (their words, not mine) between business people and IT systems providers. But hang on, that’s what the requirements process is in the first place isn’t it? It’s about existing in the gap and forming the bridge or indeed bridges.
Rather than focus on satisfying a list of requirements - the approach taken by traditional requirements management solutions - Holocentric says their product focuses on satisfying desired business outcomes through business process modeling. They say that employing a visual model to capture peoples’ roles and derive requirements produces more effective results… and that requirements based upon roles lead to higher quality user acceptance, testing and implementations.
OK OK I buy that to some degree, but any developer worth their salt will argue that you can’t define all requirements within a system based upon roles – there has to be rules too. There will always be some general system level requirements for core functionality that are based upon rules right?
Also, I think you could argue that roles are ‘implied’ in accurately managed requirements and that the requirements themselves by their nature define functions that support roles in the business. But this point could get too conceptual and cyclical if we go any further.
Either way – I guess it’s a case of MIND THE GAP. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
PreviousComments on this post
Adrian - glad this didn't fall between the cracks!
After 20 years of trying to get managers, end users, analysts and developers to see the same point of view I eventually accepted that people's views are fundamentally driven by the scope of their responsibility. At Holocentric we seek to support the work of a number of stakeholders through a set of inter-related viewpoints (models). We offer traceability from source code, rules, interfaces, requirements, task support, process, capabilities, measurable outcomes etc..
We spent 15 years using a range of tools and methods and found that the fidelity of the end to end story became lost through each successive hand off and translation across different toolsets - so we wrote our own. We use a model driven approach (ie a model of models) to enable rules to be modeled for rules people, roles to be modeled for process participants, source to be modeled for developers etc..
Sydney Harbor has a great bridge - and we're doing our bit to bridge some of these other gaps. Thanks - John Forrest, CEO, Holocentric.
