Monday, November 28, 2005

Requirements & Specifications in Service Oriented Systems

I couldn't help but notice that the cover story for CIO magazine was about the requirements process and the awful state that it is in. I tend to agree. When I visit customers I see one of two things:
1. The company has perfected requirements for silo based systems
2. The company stinks at requirements all together

I've looked at many systems that people wanted to upgrade, rewrite or replace using service oriented techniques. As a habit, I ask for the original requirements document for the production system. I then play this game to see if I can trace 'silo' or 'closed' characteristics back to the orignial requirements and specifications. In general, these characteristics are usually described in the 'supplementary specification' or in a supplemental 'non-functional requirements' document. And in virtually every case I am able to trace the issues back to the original documents.

One of the significant changes in the 'service oriented enterprise' is an renewed emphasis on: portfolios, product lines, business processes, enterprise requirements and cross-cutting concerns. We are stressing to our customers that they MUST revisit the requirements process and move to an 'enterprise grade' method. That said, I am proud to announce a new course from MomentumSI, "Requirements & Specifications in Service Oriented Systems"

The course is directed at the Business Analyst, but would valuable for anyone that participates in the requirements & specification activities.


Course Outline

  • Overview of SOA for the Business Analyst
  • The Business Impact of SOA
  • The Awesome™ Method for Business Analysis
  • Strategy, Portfolio Analysis and Business Case Development
  • Generating Stakeholder Requirements
  • Coordinating Enterprise Requirements
  • Validating Stakeholder Requirements
  • Generating Engineering & Procurement Specifications
  • Managing Change throughout the SDLC
  • Examples and Cases




I firmly believe that those companies that continue to use 'silo based' requirements processes will fail in adopting SOA. We will begin offering this course in January. If you're interested in the full course description, just send Alex an email: arosen [at] momentumsi.com

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