Requirements and initial questions and remarks

Requirements and questions
The client needs an application which will set of features.
Essential and optional features
*** MoSCoW priority ***********************************
• Must have
• Should have
• Could have
• Won't have

Answers to these questions can sometimes discover unrealistic business targets coupled with too low budget and or poor planing.

1. Who will be creating and writing the "initial product specifications, features and requirements":
a) Developer/Coder?
b) Customer?
c) Product manager - Neutral Tester?

2. Who will be reading/validating these specifications:
a) Product manager? Coder?
b) Customer? Tester? User?

3. Who will be maintaining these specifications (this can often be the hardest part)?

4. What is the purpose of the specifications? Is it to ensure that the software works as desired? Are specifications intended to fully cover all of the possible use cases, or only a cross-section? Are they "start-to-finish" tests, i.e., a full business use case, or are they scenarios?

5. Will customer also provide a Constant Product Testing, in order to find out if the product features meet all his requirements and test specifications?

Software quality
-------------------
Customer also should perform sufficient testing and quality assurance during the alpha testing, minimizing the risk for technical failure upon deployment.

Customer also should provide sufficient oversight on development in key areas such as testing.
The software should not be "prematurely" accepted software production that has "known defects impacting performance."

Reviewing approved requirements, "without fully understanding what they were approving.” Often customer's inexperience, combined with project manaement and development "lack of rigor and discipline," can create the software that could fail if released.

"four major weaknesses” the RFP contains:

(1) unprioritized and often ambiguous requirements,
(2) lack of detailed and objective source selection criteria,
(3) the lack of specification of detailed... operational system attributes, performance measures, associated metrics, and a risk management framework, and
(4) the absence of an explicit risk assessment of bidder plans, schedules, and assumptions.