Filed under: Requirement Analysis

Ready Made v Ground Up

Now this is a debate ragging in my head for quite some time now. I just completed a project for my college's website. The website was built using Drupal. We are now looking for a fully functional website for the college alumni. And there again, we are looking at Ning as a platform. Drupal wass used by a group of students to build a website. They did not have the time to build the whole thing from scratch. Why? Because they were busy with their projects and assignments. When it came to working professionals building a similar website, time became even more of a luxury than before and we moved towards a more ready made platform. And in all this i am not even talking about the time spent in developing the product. But like all software pros, i am talking about the time spent in testing it, making it bullet proof and then maintaining it. Now, this entails a lot of time. When you come to think of it, if and when someone starts paying you for something like this, it becomes a full time job. But then again, that is a big "if".

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You cannot please everyone

I was taught this lesson in my 1st year of engineering when i was working on my college magazine, Srijna. It was a simple idea and thought. Beyond anything else, it was a warning. The fact that you cannot please everyone is well ingrained in my head. I understand it better than most people. "Why?", you ask. Simply because, i fail at it over and over and over again. I find the whole notion challenging. Over the years i have witnessed it in many projects and activities in which i have been involved in. The world of professional software development is no different. I am not talking about my work at office. I am talking about Project Doughnut, the founding website team of my undergrad college. Today, after its soft launch nearly 2 and half weeks ago, the website was thrown into the deep waters of an online public forum. This was the kind of publicity we (the team and i) were and were not looking for. But then again, there was the feedback, which we took with intent ears and minds. Paid good attention to most of what people had to say. And that is where i realised that i had yet again set out on a road to keep every one happy, this is otherwise called User Acceptance Testing in the world of software development.

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SRS: Software Requirement Specifications

I was finally able to clean up my comp today off all the trash i had accumulated over the years in college. Saved up a lot of space!! :D That is when i found this rather interesting document worth having a look at. It was a simple straight forward guideline to writing an SRS. I used it while documenting my analysis and design aspects of my final year project. It is to the point and comprehensive to say the least. I guess one such document should always be by your side while working on any project. :) I could never quite locate the true source of this document. It was a life saver for me. So here is the link to it: SRS.pdf Hope this helps you in your documentation and analysis of your projects. Cheers!!!

Requirements

Every project is a result of a set of requirements. The success and the failure that project depends upon the extent to which those requirements are satisfied with the project. This is not another piece of literature that will tell you the importance of understanding a client's or consumer's requirements because it is important for the consumer. I am a coder, and i will like to, for a change, try and point out the issues a coder has if the requirements are not clearly defined. To be more explicit, i really do not care about how poor requirement analysis usually effects the consumer, i am more concerned about how it effects the coder, who is expected to transform those requirements to a finished product and machine. My point being, if the coder himself is unclear about the specs., then we have bigger concerns, bigger than the client.

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