Business Specifications: The Key to Successful Software Engineering

One step is crucial to the success of virtually every software development project: specifying the business problem with clarity and precision. Business Specifications brings together the latest real-world techniques for doing so. Independent of methodology, and refreshingly practical, this book contains extensive examples drawn from real consulting experience in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and other key industries. The book demonstrates proven techniques for discovering knowledge "buried" throughout the business. It shows why business domain experts must take the lead in defining business rules - and how analysts and technologists can support them. Above all, it demonstrates how to tame complexity while capturing the essence of a business in a rigorous specification that can not only be realized efficiently, but can evolve as the business changes. Whatever your role in business process transformation or software development, this book will dramatically increase your odds of success.