Requirements.net is home of the industry consortium for business analysis. Through focus on requirements definition, visualization, and management, the companies behind Requirements.net are driven to share and sponsor best practices and technologies to improve industry requirements practices.
Posted April 20th, 2009 by Matt Morgan2 Comments »
Consortium member Blueprint (www.blueprintsys.com) has published a new whitepaper looking at the aspects of requirements definition when improving the efficiency and effectiveness of outsourced teams.
Here is the abstract:
In today’s economic environment, business organizations are demanding focused attention to fiscal discipline. Finance, marketing, sales, operations, and IT are all being measured by an increasingly tight focus on returns. Investments for future growth are controlled, and a return to core business efficiencies has become the top investment thesis. This paper explores industry, analyst, and customer recommendations on how to focus on requirements to ensure application development accuracy and to control risk with outsourced team so that the IT organization can turn those efficiencies into increased horse-power and lower operational costs
In this series, consortium members will be looking at Business Analysis and Requirements Definition is impacted by the move to distributed teams, the use of Outsourcing, and the impact of global IT projects for new market opportunities.
Welcome to Requirements.net 2.0.
Requirements.net is the industry’s largest consortium for the empowerment of the business analyst, and we are very pleased to welcome our new membership board, and introduce several new initiatives for the coming year.
Below is the press release from today:
Requirements.net Consortium doubles membership, unveils new best practices offerings for requirements professionals
Industry Leading Consortium Serving Over 15,000 Requirements Professionals Will Release Requirements Definition Knowledge Archive In Late 2009
Toronto, ON — April 15, 2009: The Requirements.net consortium, the largest consortium for business analysts worldwide, today announced that it has doubled its membership, and the combined membership provides unprecedented market reach and leadership in business analyst empowerment. The consortium today also announced that it will make available the Requirements Definition Knowledge Archive (RDKA) to the public, in an effort to further the consortium’s vision of ensuring that all business software requirements are built following a rigorous requirements definition and management process, to meet today’s business needs.
New Members
Requirements.net produces some of the industry’s most respected thought leadership published works on the requirements discipline. Capgemini (Euronext: CAP), Centerline Partners, BA Times, ZAPtechnologies.com and the Requirement Solution Group have now joined the consortium, which was originally founded by Blueprint, HP, RQNG, Orasi Software, SKY IT Group and CorTechs.
“Modern business applications are too complex and too strategic to risk failure,” said David Nyland, CEO of Blueprint. “Stand-alone business applications are transforming to become end-to-end integrated business systems and new technologies (such as SOA, Webservices, AJAX, FLEX, and others) are re-inventing how business application requirements need to be captured, defined, validated, and managed. Like a GPS for application development, the rapidly growing requirements.net consortium helps business analysts ensure that they can navigate and communicate in a clear voice through this rapidly changing landscape.”
“Customers can reduce the risk of failure of business applications by implementing best practices for requirements” said Mark Sarbiewski, senior director of products, Software and Solutions, HP. “The expansion of the consortium will help IT organizations deliver applications that better meet the needs of the business.”
Requirements Definition Knowledge Archive (RDKA)
In addition to the new members, the consortium also announced to day that it will release a collective set of best practice works to the public later this year, in which consortium members contribute specific elements from their practices. The first set of Knowledge Archives will focus on Globalization and Offshoring, and AGILE Development in a Distributed environment. The consortium expects to release these by the end of the year, with more to follow in 2010.”
With advent of new technologies and SDLC methodologies, combined with globalization and the resulting distribution of development teams, the companies behind Requirements.net recognize that the industry is recasting how it approaches the problem of business analysis,” said Charlie Li, Vice President at Capgemini. “The consortium’s goal is to help business analysts ensure that they can communicate in a clear voice through this rapidly changing landscape; they can easily yet rigorously define and manage requirements, so that the end products truly meet the business need both in terms of quality and cost.”
Requirements Lifecycle Awards
The Requirements.net consortium today also announced that it will be launching the Requirements Lifecycle Awards later this year. The first of its kind, these awards will honor top IT implementations that have reduced waste from the focus on requirements optimization.Look for information soon on these awards at www.requirements.net.
About The Requirements.net Consortium
Founded by HP and Blueprint in 2008 and now thirteen members strong, Requirements.net is the industry’s largest consortium for the advancement of Business Analysis empowerment. Through focus on requirements definition, visualization, and management, the companies behind Requirements.net are driven to share and sponsor best practices and technologies to improve industry requirements practices. As prescribed in the Requirements.net charter, the call for members is opened only once a year, between January and March.
Series Podcasts: We have published three Podcasts as part of this series, all of which are available for download at no charge. As a summary:
Podcast: A Look at Agile with Martin Crisp, CTO of Blueprint - In this exclusive podcast, Martin Crisp talks about the importance of business analysis and requirements definition in Agile development. Download here.
Podcast: Interview with Genefa Murphy, Product Manager at HP Software -In this episode, Genefa Murphy discusses how HP Quality Center 10’s enhanced requirements management module dramatically improves the practice of requirements management. Download it here.
Podcast: Interview with Brian Cook, CEO of Cook Enterprises -Brian talks about the importance of models and simulation in defining application requirements. Download it here.
Podcast: Interview with Jonathan Babcock, a BA’s Perspective on Maximizing IT Value - Our most popular podcast ever. Jonathan talks about defining application requirements and how BA’s can Maximize IT Value. Download it here.
Whitepapers and Webinars: Below is a summary of the whitepapers and on-demand webinar assets from the series:
Authoring Requirements in an Agile World Whitepaper - written by Tony Higgins, this whitepaper outlines how to define requirements for Agile methodologies. Download it here.
Reducing Risk through requirements-driven quality management - written by HP, this whitepapers looks at driving a quality approach to requirements management. Read it now.
On Demand Webinar: Iterative Requirements Validation - This 45 minute webinar features Steven Davis, frequently referred as the Grandfather of Requirements. This webinar looks at how upfront validation helps ensure accuracy of requirements assets. Watch it here.
On Demand Webinar: Authoring Requirements in an Agile World. This 45 minute webinar looks at the right way to define requirements in Agile. It features a case-study from Imageright corporation. Watch it here.
Best reader quotes from email and from the blog comment system:
”We see a lot of focus on global alignment in the bank. The message of connecting quality and business analysis is very much part of our proposed process. We have deloitte in house helping with implementation of a new requirements program that helps visualize our application requirements. This webinar was helpful.” - Lisa
“We are facing a serious problem with Requirements understanding with our offshore teams. The collective challenges are identical to the case study demonstrated ” - Richard
“My company sees value in the “small v” definition right now. And, frankly, this is a problem. We have just cancelled three projects that are needed by the business. Our team is branching into the local telephone market, and the system delay makes the business delay its plans. Yes, we will save the project costs, but we are now six months behind the business plan. In today’s economy, people cannot see much further than 30 days ahead.” - Sarah
“We are in the information publication industry. Most new initiatives are around business news being delivered over the net. We are diversifying our business away from paper based publications. Its the growth area. Regarding “everyone is afraid to be on this side of the arguement”, I think this is the only side to be on. Its about being on the sharp side of the arrow” - Cinda
Thank you for your participation in this Requirements.net series. Next week, we will be launching a new series entitled “The Global Business Analyst”.
Posted March 23rd, 2009 by Keith BarrettNo Comments »
Hi All,
My name is Genefa Murphy and I am the Product Manager for HP’s Requirements Management solution (part of HP Quality Center)!!!! Whilst this is my introductory entry on the requirements.net blog space – I have already started bogging via HP.com on topics such as:
The value of RM
Wikis for RM
Visualization of requirements
I hope you enjoy the blogs I have already posted and I look forward to continue my blogging on requirements.net. All the best Genefa
Posted March 5th, 2009 by Tracy Lynne DedoreNo Comments »
This week requirements.net delivered a webinar entitled Authoring Requirements in an Agile World. Watching the registrations leading up to the event it was obvious this was going to be ‘standing room only’ and we were right. The event was recorded and now available as an ‘On Demand Webinar’. I’m now happy to announce that a companion whitepaper also entitled Authoring Requirements in an Agile World is now available that elaborates on the content of the webinar. On the same topic, a podcast featuring Martin Crisp, CTO of Blueprint was also made available earlier this week. The move to agile, and in particular innovative ways in which requirements play into the agile approach, is clearly on people’s minds – we already have record downloads for these assets.
As a companion to our March 3rd executive webinar entitled “Authoring Requirements in an AGILE world”, the Requirements.net consortium has posted a new Podcast entitled “A Look at AGILE with Martin Crisp, CTO of Blueprint.” Get it here.
A summary of the Podcast:
Join Matthew Morgan and Keith Barrett on another episode of the Requirements Unplugged podcast. In this installment of the Maximize IT Value podcast series, Matthew Morgan and Keith Barrett host Martin Crisp, Chief Technology Officer at Blueprint. Martin is an 18 year veteran of the software industry whose career spans multiple tenures as CTO and is a published expert in software development and quality assurance.
In our interview, Martin focuses on the benefits and pitfalls of AGILE, and discusses how Business Analysts are even more critical to defining requirements in AGILE projects. Martin discusses how he transformed Blueprint’s research and development organization by deploying AGILE to double the number of releases, improve software quality, all while better aligning with projects with business needs. Our conversation also touches on “Distributed AGILE,” a fast growing subset of AGILE which works with teams distributed across multiple geographies.
The 2009 Requirements.net executive webinar series continues with “Authoring Requirements in an AGILE World” this Tuesday.
In this special edition webinar, Keith Barrett (host of the Requirements.net Podcast) and Tony Higgins (VP of Products at consortium member Blueprint) discuss how to correctly structure requirements definition efforts in AGILE implementations.
The abstract is as follows:
“AGILE development is not emerging, its here. We are doing everything in an iterative and spiral model. Requirements have transformed into Story Boards which are the anchor to our entire ALM process” - VP, Fortune 50 ManufacturerJoin the Requirements.net Consortium as we discuss the transformation of IT through an AGILE approach to definition, development, and testing. In this special edition webinar, we will look at how organizations can bring the iterative process to requirements story-boards to ensure rapid-revision capability to application changes. You will learn how auto-generation of quality assets is replacing “manual test plans” to ensure speed in AGILE sprints.
Over 200 registrations — registration is free -register here.
Posted February 18th, 2009 by Matt Morgan7 Comments »
As a reminder, the 2009 Requirements.net Executive Webinar series continues with “Proper Requirements Communication for Offshore Teams” on Thursday, Feb 19th at 2:00PM.
The abstract:
“Our offshore development teams were in-efficient and wasteful, until we embraced a requirements driven ALM process that broke through the communication barrier” – CIO, Fortune 10 Financial
Join Blueprint and HP Software as they discuss how IT organizations can transform their Application Lifecycle Management processes to ensure speed and success with offshore teams. In this special edition webinar, we will discuss how evolved requirements and quality management are the control points to ensuring project success for distributed organizations.
In this webinar, you will learn how requirements visualization and up-front validation ensure accuracy of business needs when requirements are conceptualized.
In addition, we will discuss how to maximize the use of web-based Requirements Management solutions to ensure lifecycle traceability and cycle management.
Finally, we will discuss how risk-based quality management ties ALM processes together to ensure maximum efficiency.
Posted February 17th, 2009 by Matt MorganNo Comments »
This Friday, Keith Barrett and Matthew Morgan are hosting a special guest on the the “Maximizing IT Value” podcast series ….. and Requirements.net readers have the opportunity to participate.
Genefa Murphy from the HP Software product team will be joining us for a recording session on Friday. For those who have not had a chance to meet or work with Genefa, she runs the HP Quality Center Requirements Management product group, shaping the roadmap for HP Software’s requirements module. She has the opportunity to work with HP Software’s Research and Development organization as they solve customer problems through innovative application lifecycle solutions.
How can you participate?
Simple: Email us your questions. Have questions about HP Quality Center’s future direction? Have questions about how Requirements Management ties in with Quality Assurance? Ask away. Also, we will respect your privacy… we will not use your full name, company name, or email address in the podcast.
Consortium member Blueprint (www.blueprintsys.com) has published a new whitepaper looking at the aspects of requirements definition when improving the efficiency and effectiveness of outsourced teams.
