The Specification Cookbook

Introduction

There are many excellent examples of programming textbooks written in the style of a series of recipes or a cookbook. These provide readers with snippets of example code and explanatory text, each targeted at solving a very specific task in the given programming language. Such books distill the accumulated experience of very senior developers in a practical way that is immediately useful and applicable in many different end systems. Most applications tend to have to solve a similar set of implementation issues at a lower level; cookbook – style texts provide an invaluable aid to programmers needing inspiration.

RSBA Technology believes that the equally important discipline of business analysis, the art and science of requirements can benefit from a similar approach. Although the application domain may vary widely, at a lower level, the methods of business analysis are broadly similar and widely re-usable. There are a number of texts and methodologies on the subject of business and systems analysis, but we felt there is a need for a complimentary task-based set of examples and guidance for use by business analysts working in all sectors. Therefore, the idea of the RSBA Technology Specification Cookbook was born.

The Cookbook consists of an ever-growing list of immediate, practical requirements analysis and specification ideas and techniques that the reader can use or adopt to their own projects, standards and organisation.

We have used all of these techniques in projects past and present, and represent all of our accumulated experience. We also acknowledge previous works that we have used heavily in the past and are therefore inevitably reflected to a greater or lesser degree in the Cookbook. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the following resources, all of which we consider essential reading for a professional business analyst:

  • Competitive Engineering by Tom Gilb
  • Domain-Driven Modelling by Eric Evans
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