ICS 121: Expressing User Needs

Most development methods seek a detailed set of requirements in some format.
- But, at this point, we are just gathering information
- And, not all of the team members gathering the information may be highly technical
- So, it is best to have a very simple notation and tools
- This information will be used to create more formal requirements documents later
Let's choose natural language text with a simple document structure.
- We will also emphasize maintaining quotations or references to direct observations.
- We will include "user stories", a notation from XP and other Agile methodologies
Note that we are choosing this notation.
- Every software development artifact is written in some notation.
- Not every detail of every notation comes out of a textbook, you can make up your own or borrow some ideas from the standards that you know.
- Look at the properties of the notation and judge whether it is appropriate to the goals for that activity in your method.

Here is a template: ReadySET user-needs.html
- Descriptions of stakeholders
- Notes from interviews
- User stories