Support Forums: Message List - Mythical Man-Month walkthrough, Chapter 1: The Tar Pit http://www.theserverside.com Most recent forum messages en Jive Forums Silver 5.5.30 (www.jivesoftware.com) Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:26:14 -0400 Re: Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925
How long ago was that? The reason I ask is that Word now (theoretically) supports XML including DocBook at least to some degree.


Four or five years ago. On a subsequent project I tried to switch to MS Word XML...]]> Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:32:37 -0400 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:32:37 -0400 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:32:37 -0400 Sep 19, 2007 James Watson 0 Re: Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 One of the challenges with requirements is that they really straddle the fence between true technical documentation and "business" oriented documentation. A lot of the contents are heavily structured but also a lot are not....]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:21:04 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:21:04 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:21:04 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 James Watson 0 Re: Mythical Man-Month walkthrough, Chapter 1: The Tar Pit http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:51:24 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:51:24 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:51:24 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 William Childers 0 Re: Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 How long ago was that? The reason I ask is that Word now (theoretically) supports XML including DocBook at least to some degree....]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:04:09 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:04:09 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:04:09 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Erik Engbrecht 2 Re: Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 The problem is the Word docs and PPTs are all necessary deliverables. I thought I was being really clever once and used some XSLT to translate a Use Case Model into a big hyperlinked requirements document in HTML. I liked it. No one else...]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:21:00 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:21:00 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:21:00 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 James Watson 3 Re: Willful misreading? http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Complex problems have intrinsic "think time" - an observation consistent with the agile view of incremental and iterative progress based on continuous delivery of releases of useful working systems....]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:54:29 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:54:29 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:54:29 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Erik Engbrecht 0 Re: Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 The problem with requirements is often that they just get put into Word documents. WORD IS NOT A REQUIREMENTS TOOL! You need to be able to express dependencies, track and broadcast changes, and links or relations to other artifacts (like......]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:46:41 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:46:41 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:46:41 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Erik Engbrecht 4 Re: Willful misreading? http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925
Brooks Law - the maxim for which the book is most famous - states (more or less) that "adding more people to a late project makes it finish even later" is based on an understanding that communications overhead between members of a...]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:32:49 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:32:49 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:32:49 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 John Brand 0 Re: Willful misreading? http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Brooks Law - the maxim for which the book is most famous - states (more or less) that "adding more people to a late project makes it finish even later" is based on an understanding that communications overhead between members of a large team...]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:13:24 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:13:24 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:13:24 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Joseph Ottinger 1 Requirements tools http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:17:16 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:17:16 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:17:16 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Tor Iver Wilhelmsen 5 Re: Mythical Man-Month walkthrough, Chapter 1: The Tar Pit http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 That's not funny. The poor suckers that keep buy these products should be pitied, not mocked.
...]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:26:59 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:26:59 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:26:59 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Karl Banke 0 Willful misreading? http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:21:39 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:21:39 -0400 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:21:39 -0400 Sep 18, 2007 Simon Sonter 3 Re: Mythical Man-Month walkthrough, Chapter 1: The Tar Pit http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:21:48 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:21:48 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:21:48 -0400 Sep 17, 2007 Erik Engbrecht 0 Identifying Big Game http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925 The first chapter of The Mythical Man-Month is a throwing down of a glove: expressing the need for large teams, in comparison to the perceived effectiveness of small teams. Small teams can have great success with small projects, Brooks says,...]]> Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:14:04 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:14:04 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:14:04 -0400 Sep 17, 2007 Erik Engbrecht 0 Re: Indeed! http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=46925
Very well said. IMHO, another interesting idiosyncrasy of requirements is the matryoshka effect: one requirement has a little other requirement enclosed within itself. That makes this new requirement invisible to the crew at the moment of...]]> Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:44:35 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:44:35 -0400 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:44:35 -0400 Sep 17, 2007 Bill Pyne 0