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Handling Non-Functional Requirements In Agile Projects

October 12, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Agile Project Management, Requirements Management

Handling Non-Functional Requirements In Agile Projects
By Xiaoming Wang

I was recently asked by a customer how to manage non-functional requirements in agile projects, hence this article.

Any requirement in an agile project can be analyzed the following way:

  1. Clarifying your target;
  2. Brainstorming;
  3. Finding options;
  4. Analysis of these options from different angles;
  5. Making a guideline;
  6. Creating verification method/frequency;
  7. Separating the above into small units and track.

As we know non-functional requirements vary from one to one. Basically there are two types of them.

  • Those that can be regarded as functional requirements(such as usability, localization, etc…)
  • Those that cannot be regarded as functional requirements (such as performance, design requirement, integration requirement, etc…)

For those that can be regarded as functional ones, yes, treat them as functional requirements and describe them as stories.

For the others, write a non-functional requirement story. A non functional requirement story card consists of the below fields:

  • Title
  • Target
  • Guideline
  • Verification Method/Frequency
  • Start Point
  • Owner

There are six basic rules you should think of before you make a non-functional requirement card:

  1. Who wants it?
  2. What they want to achieve?
  3. Why it’s valuable?
  4. Relative priority
  5. How you can you be confident that it’s been done or how to verify?
  6. Could it be a “function”?

After you have a clear idea of the questions listed above, you will be ready to develop an non-functional story card.

Bear in mind, verification method/frequency is the core of this card. Guidelines indicate the way of complete the story successfully.

Make sure it is manageable and traceable.

Mr Xiaoming Wang, MSc (Information Processing), is a consultant, project manager, trainer, coach and business analyst in ThoughtWorks. Xiaoming has valuable experience of enterprise information system development widely across banking, finance, retail, manufacture, hydrocarbon, HSE management, telecommunication, CRM,.CMS, BPMS and grid computing. His expertise includes Agile project management, Lean methodology consulting, organization transformation from CMM to Lean/Agile, program management and business analysis. Xiaoming has worked in diverse industries for four years then settled down in IT industry as an IT manager. Then he moved to IT consulting field and focuses on IT project management. He was also a contributor to open source, such as CruiseControl.

Xiaoming’s Weblog OSSME.COM has rich information of IT project management, agile practice and lean methodology.

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