Customer Requirements

by Marco Behler

Feel like strangling your boss or customer for their vague and ever-changing software requirements? You might have that nagging feeling that you don’t exactly grasp what your customer really wants. You might be rushing out your code in headless chicken mode because you underestimated the workload. Or perhaps after everything has been delivered, your rate or your company’s doesn’t even match most elance.com projects, because your estimation and billing were so far off.

Learn how proper work on requirements - not just your technical skills - can rescue your next software project.

This work was written and produced entirely by the author. We are proud to be distributing it.

Rich in detail and examples, this book is designed to let you learn and implement. Every chapter comes with real-life practice exercises, based on the fictitious new payment start-up Zee Bänk, and plenty of Notepad, Jira, and IntelliJ screenshots. You’ll take away from this book:

• How you get from vague requirements (“we need XYZ now!”) to what exactly you need to implement: your task and all its edge cases.

• What and how to talk about and analyze requirements with your customer, boss, and colleagues.

• Warning triggers when talking with clients or bosses that you are being bullied, how to respond, and how to push back on constant change.

• Strategies for properly estimating software tasks, including building a time-tracking database for solid estimations. Then, how to properly bill based on those estimations and avoid being underpaid (as a freelancer) or killing your department (as a company worker).

• How properly clarified requirements are your foundation for tests; how to write those tests and how they lead to rock-solid code. Plus, suggestions for recording and maintaining requirements (in wikis or JIRA-like systems).

• Strategies to find out what exactly your users want, even if they might not exactly know it themselves.

• What happens if you ignore all that advice and become a headless chicken.

• Errata, typos, suggestions

Releases:

• P1.2 2016/02/12
• P1.1 2015/09/10
• P1.0 2015/09/08

• Dedication
• Too busy?
• The Problem – Let’s get ready to rumble: Customer vs Programmer!
• Communication – Concrete: What (not) to talk about. Who. How. When. Why.
• Practice Time: Communication – Let’s get our Notepad and JIRA out
• Estimation & Billing – How to properly estimate and bill your software project
• Practice Time: Estimation & Billing – From gut feelings to a time tracking database
• Testing & Implementing – How properly defined requirements lead to rock solid software
• Practice Time: Testing & Implementing – Jira and lots of Cucumber
• Requirement Procurement – Strategies to figure out what users want
• Tools & Frameworks – Why they don’t matter half as much as you might think
• The Final Curtain – A look at your career. Mental health. Startups.
• The Next Step