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Rating: 
Summary: Practical desktop reference guide for Requirements Analysts
Review: I was eager to get a copy of this follow-up to Dr Young's "Effective Requirements Practices" (ERP) because ERP is one of my favourite requirements books -- and on first review, its sibling looks to be an excellent companion volume. Where ERP laid out 10 key requirements practices and focused on *what* to do, the Requirements Engineering Handbook (REH) covers *how* to do it -- the process, tools, and techniques to help identify what Dr Young calls "REAL" requirements.The REH discusses the roles, skills, and characteristics a Requirements Analyst (RA) needs to be effective. It defines over 20 types of requirements, and tells you how to gather and manage them. Like Steve McConnell does in his excellent project management books, Ralph Young sets all of this in a context that helps if you're using the CMMI, but doesn't require it. He also adds case studies and sidebar commentaries from both luminaries and run-of-the mill RAs (which helped convince me I could really do this stuff on my project!) Like ERP, REH is extensively footnoted, with a very complete and current set of references & URLs that makes it essentially an index into the requirements body of knowledge. This Handbook is concise (215 pp, plus glossary & 10 pg bibliography), so when looking for references, it's sometimes even faster than Google, because you get several footnotes that summarize the most appropriate literature, and help you get directly to relevant additional sources. You don't get a CD like ERP had, but many of the techniques reference templates or guides that can be freely downloaded from the author's website. It's an easy read, and nicely laid out so you can find things when thumbing through. Good Stuff!
Rating:
Summary: Practical desktop reference guide for Requirements Analysts
Review: I was eager to get a copy of this follow-up to Dr Young's "Effective Requirements Practices" (ERP) because ERP is one of my favourite requirements books -- and on first review, its sibling looks to be an excellent companion volume. Where ERP laid out 10 key requirements practices and focused on *what* to do, the Requirements Engineering Handbook (REH) covers *how* to do it -- the process, tools, and techniques to help identify what Dr Young calls "REAL" requirements. The REH discusses the roles, skills, and characteristics a Requirements Analyst (RA) needs to be effective. It defines over 20 types of requirements, and tells you how to gather and manage them. Like Steve McConnell does in his excellent project management books, Ralph Young sets all of this in a context that helps if you're using the CMMI, but doesn't require it. He also adds case studies and sidebar commentaries from both luminaries and run-of-the mill RAs (which helped convince me I could really do this stuff on my project!) Like ERP, REH is extensively footnoted, with a very complete and current set of references & URLs that makes it essentially an index into the requirements body of knowledge. This Handbook is concise (215 pp, plus glossary & 10 pg bibliography), so when looking for references, it's sometimes even faster than Google, because you get several footnotes that summarize the most appropriate literature, and help you get directly to relevant additional sources. You don't get a CD like ERP had, but many of the techniques reference templates or guides that can be freely downloaded from the author's website. It's an easy read, and nicely laid out so you can find things when thumbing through. Good Stuff!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Re-invent the Wheel
Review: This concisely written and easy to understand handbook seems designed to save project managers and requirements analysts scores of man hours and succeeds brillantly. Need to write a position description for your Requirements Manager - its in there. Need to define the milestones for your Requirements Team - its in there. Need to share with your boss case studies of what happens if your project does NOT implement a specific requirements processes - its in there. My ROI for this handbook has been 3:1. For every hour have I spent reading, I save at least 3 hours as I write job descriptions, GANTT charts, etc. I could reproduce some of the information in the handbook based on my 20 years of project experience, but not as well and not nearly as fast. I recommend this handbook to Project or Requirements Managers who need to plan for and implement a successful requirement phase in record time. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Re-invent the Wheel
Review: This concisely written and easy to understand handbook seems designed to save project managers and requirements analysts scores of man hours and succeeds brillantly. Need to write a position description for your Requirements Manager - its in there. Need to define the milestones for your Requirements Team - its in there. Need to share with your boss case studies of what happens if your project does NOT implement a specific requirements processes - its in there. My ROI for this handbook has been 3:1. For every hour have I spent reading, I save at least 3 hours as I write job descriptions, GANTT charts, etc. I could reproduce some of the information in the handbook based on my 20 years of project experience, but not as well and not nearly as fast. I recommend this handbook to Project or Requirements Managers who need to plan for and implement a successful requirement phase in record time. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: The Complete Requirements Engineering Book
Review: Too often the requirements effort on a project is driven by the current fad in software development without putting a sound foundation in place. Dr. Young's book is about building that foundation, a requirements engineering foundation built on sound engineering principles. As a requirements practitioner, I have many books on requirements engineering. Most of them are limited to specific tools, techniques, and the prejudices of their authors and most contain only a few chapters that are really useful. However, each chapter in the Requirements Engineering Handbook contains a wealth of information on what a successful requirements program looks like.
There are chapters that discuss the skills that a requirements analyst should have such as general skills useful to the analyst (or any engineer for that matter) and specialty skills such as modeling, inspections, and process improvement. There are chapters that discuss building the requirements program such as descriptions of the industry best practices for a sound requirements program and how quality improvement principles can be integrated with the requirements engineering processes. There are chapters that discuss the qualities of the requirements themselves such as descriptions of the requirement types and best of all guidance of how you can use these descriptions to ensure complete understanding of customer needs and expectations. Each of the requirements books I own provides some useful information in a particular situation, but Dr. Young's Requirements Engineering Handbook is the only complete program building book on requirements engineering that I have seen. If I were charged with starting a new Requirements Engineering program somewhere and could take only one book with me; it would be The Requirements Engineering Handbook by Ralph R. Young.
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