Proposed Requirements Refinement Process

[Darren Platt <dplatt@securant.com>]

Attached is a proposal for how we should work together to refine our
requirements document.  Some of the contents have been discussed within our
group and are currently being implemented.  For the benefit of those who are
new to our group, or may read this doc later, the proposed process begins
where we began as a group about a month ago.  Right now, we are essentially
on step 5.

One of the goals was to make this process as scalable as possible, which is
reflected in the 'champion' mechanism.  In my opinion the bulk of the work
is in structuring these requirements in such a way that we can make clear
decisions about them.  As we are coming at this effort from different
perspectives, this task is often not as simple as it might sound.  By having
champions for different issues, we are able to work in parallel.  The faster
champions can create ballots, the faster the group can make decisions, the
faster we can add detail to the requirements doc (our mission).

Another goal is to make the process as simple as possible, so that it is
easily understandable and implementable by all.  Hopefully the fact that it
can be somewhat clearly (I hope) expressed on one page of text is some
indication of this.

Please send in any comments you have on this process.  Our deadline is
rapidly approaching, so it would be great if we could get the bulk of the
discussion related to our process out of the way before our next concall.
Even if we establish that this proposal is too contentious and I withdraw it
(or don't formally propose it).  We will need some kind of process, though.

On a related note - IMHO one of the other things which we may be able to
contribute to the TC for the first F2F is a working requirements refinement
process.  If we were successful in this, we might shave some significant
time off of the TC's ability to move forward into design by creating some
inertia in the effort.  Perhaps there are already other thoughts of how this
is to be handled at the TC level that I'm unaware of.  Just a thought.

Regards,

Darren


Darren Platt
Principal Technical Evangelist
Securant Technologies
1 Embarcadero Center, Floor 5
San Francisco, CA 94111
tel - (415) 315-1529
fax - (415) 315-1545
http://www.securant.com/
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Requirements Refinement Process