Knowing Where You’re Going
January 2nd, 2005
One of the hardest things in any project is to figure out exactly
what you’re trying to accomplish. This template is intended to help
software development teams do that by forcing them to state what
problem they’re trying to solve, who it affects, and why their
solution is a good one. It is taken from:
Gary Pollice, Liz Augustine, Chris Lowe, and Jas Madhur: Software
Development for Small Teams: A RUP-Centric Approach.
Addison-Wesley, 2003, 0321199502.
The bits on the left, on gray, are boilerplate; the bits on the
right, on white, are to be replaced with something
project-specific. I will post again in two weeks once students’
vision statements are on the web.
The Problem
| The problem of | developing software in a predictable and reliable manner |
| affects | the management of software projects. Specifically, developers are not able to predict reliably how long it takes them to perform development tasks with acceptable quality, which makes it impossible to effectively plan a project. |
| The impact is that | users and managers are never sure whether the produced software will meet its requirements, how reliable the software will be, or whether the software will be delivered on time. |
| A successful solution would be | for developers to become more self-aware of what they do (i.e. the process they actually follow), how they spend their time, and the kinds of defects they find in their work. |
The Solution
| For | software development teams |
| who | need to better understand how and when defects are introduced into their products, |
| our product is a | tool for gathering and reporting performance metrics |
| that | helps developers track and analyze personal software development metrics. |
| Unlike | the alternative of failing to gather data, or trying to gather it manually, |
| our approach | helps users gather data unobtrusively, and provides objective feedback that allows them to improve both individual and team performance. |
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