Ellen Gottesdiener
Addison-Wesley, 2002
Ellen Gottesdiener
Addison-Wesley, 2002
ISBN 0-201-78606-0 (paper)
Buy it from Amazon.com (commission paid)
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk (commission paid)
It really isn’t every day that someone writes a book that provides a completely fresh take on requirements. Ellen Gottesdiener has managed to do just that.
This readable and practical book is visibly based on a wealth of direct experience of facilitating requirements workshops, and her message is focused exclusively on the power of the workshop approach. This does mean that this book isn’t for every project – if you are working on a subsystem under a strict contract, there is little scope for collaborating with stakeholders to work out the requirements together. To her credit, Gottesdiener carefully points out the limits of her approach, and she is admirably well-read. For instance she was inspired by the philosophy of Dialogue of David Bohm.
Part 1 of the book steps through what a requirements workshop is, and what it should deliver; how to make a workshop succeed.
Part 2 looks at what goes on in a workshop, and offers an admirable range of strategies for organizing workshops, types of question to ask, how to facilitate, the logistics of organizing a workshop, what to do if things are difficult, and tools you can use to make things 'flow'. Proven groupwork patterns such as forming-storming-norming-performing are explained and illustrated; lower-level patterns such as 'decide how to decide' are documented in an Appendix.
Part 3 looks at how to design workshops, with case studies on what worked well and what didn't. The final chapter wisely discusses how to make the case for requirements and workshops to management, and how evaluate progress. The sections on the business value of requirements and how to 'surface' problems are excellent.
The book uses the language of Use Cases, and refers to other UML diagrams along the way. It also mentions software from time to time, but this is definitely a book that is useful in systems of all types – from civil engineering projects to personal music players.
There are parts of this book that benefit enormously from Gottesdiener’s natural enthusiasm, and the simple fact that she is American. She is able to talk in a simple and effective way about making workshops fun; about drawing mandalas and using the 4 principles of the native American medicine wheel; even about using toys as prizes and holding warm-up exercises to get people into collaborative mood.
The helps - navigation diagrams, tables of techniques, further readings, bibliography, glossary, index - are excellent; Gottesdiener has applied her care for participants to her readers. For instance the further reading is never just a list; instead she says '..offers wisdom on..', '..is a landmark article that..', '..is a superb book that..' giving the reader a 3 or 4 line pen-portrait of each recommended reading.
Even if you have been running workshops for years, you will find new insights, conceptual tools and techniques in this lively and welcome contribution. Every requirements engineer should have a copy in a handy place on their bookshelf.
© Ian Alexander 2002
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