Ralph R. Young
Management Concepts, Inc, 2006
Ralph R. Young
Management Concepts, Inc, 2006
ISBN 156726-169-8 (boards)
Buy it from Amazon.com
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk
Our indefatigable colleague Ralph Young has just brought out his third requirements book. (He’ll have to get a move on to catch up with Gerry Weinberg’s quoted ‘more than 40 books’.)
This one sets out its stall at once with How the PM Will Benefit By Paying Attention To Requirements, beginning how it means to go on.
Young’s previous books Effective Requirements Practices (2001) and The Requirements Engineering Handbook (2004) described what projects and analysts (respectively) needed to do to get their requirements right.
This book is straightforwardly aimed at project managers, aiming to provide them with friendly, in-their-language advice on putting good practices in place on their projects. There are very few other requirements books for managers on the market; the Robertson's Requirements-Led Project Management (2004) is the one that comes to mind. It's a longer and more detailed book, more concerned with the actual products ("artefacts") of requirements work: effectively it sounds like requirements people explaining to managers what their work is. In contrast, Young focuses more on the management tasks to ensure that good and sufficient requirements work gets done: it sounds like a manager letting other managers know what they need to think about in this area.
These reviews don't often quote cover blurbs, but Kathy Altizer’s comment
“It puts the onus for requirements squarely where it belongs – with the PM”
does echo the tone of the book. That isn’t to say that Young believes that the analyst’s skills are unimportant: far from it. But without informed direction, projects don’t stand a chance.
This book sells RE by telling managers fairly and squarely what’s in it for them: project success, saving time and effort, staying on schedule, getting a quality product, satisfied customers. No room here for treating engineers as oily rags!
The chapters cover Key requirement success factors, Partnering, Project Startup issues, Teamwork, Coaching the team, Clear Communication, Being Agile, Continuous Improvement, the PM’s role on Quality, and finally Requirements, Risk, and the PM.
All of this is calculated to focus managers on the vital issues: does the project know what it is doing, and is that defined as well as possible. Risk, Young knows, never goes away; requirements never stand still; and processes never become perfect. On such shifting sands, some give up, keep their heads down, and plan for failure. Young stays put, and gives detailed practical advice on what to do (when Confusion reigns, Identify a champion, Hired experienced analysts, Write a project vision and scope…).
The book is enlivened with short cameo appearances by the RESG’s Suzanne Robertson and Pete Sawyer (both very readable).
If you find yourself talking to management types, and you get the feeling they need a bit of persuasion, Project Requirements might be just what you need.
© Ian Alexander 2006
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