"But we built exactly what you requested..."

Probably the most long-lasting and frustrating problem facing software development has been the communications chasm that exists between the developers and the users of business applications. Responsibility for the problem lies on both sides of the fence:

• Business users have not described their requirements in terms that developers understand

• Development teams have had a difficult time relating business requirements to development tasks, and demonstrating real progress during development efforts

There is no lingua franca to describe requirements, and no common measuring stick to determine progress.

Methodologies that have been used to solve this problem can be broken down into two broad categories:

1. Requirements-based solutions attempt to minimize requirements and software design errors through the use of cross-functional requirements and design teams. These "solutions" still produce monolithic requirements documents, ignoring the need for design iterations during software development.

2. Testing-based solutions, such as Rapid Application Development, attempt to use shorter testing cycles to identify and rectify deviations (the equivalent of mid-course corrections) from true business requirements before they become larger problems.

The ideal solution, one that Lightship promotes, maximizes mutual understanding of the business requirements and software design while frequently evaluating results against system requirements. There will never be a "silver bullet" to solve this communications problem; however, anything that can be done to foster more effective communication and produce frequent, measurable results is a move in the right direction. This is the goal of Feature-Driven Development (FDD)...

To read the complete white paper on how to enhance the understanding of business requirements and assess development progress, click here...