Workshop : Effective Management With Specification By Example

Target Audience : 1. Product Owners 2. Architects 3. Designers 4. Requirement Consultants 5. Business Analysts 6. Scrum Masters 7. Developers 8. Testers

Time : 90 min

Maximum number of people : 30

Material/Resources : 2-4 Case Studies, Post its, Charts, Markers, Scale, Flip-Board, Projector, Screen

Outline : The workshop is for product owners, business analysts, developers and testers who wish to bring a change in the way are studied, analyzed and interpreted by them. Through this workshop, you can get an insight into how you can bridge the communication gap amongst yourselves and together, collaboratively define requirements, and acceptance tests to produce software that fits the purpose. Learn how you can use these set of practices to - Implement changes more effectively - Achieve Higher Product Quality - Do less rework - Better align the activities of different roles on a project

Introduction (5 min ) Specification By Example is a set of process patterns that helps teams build the right software product. It defines a way for the teams to write just enough documentation to facilitate change effectively in short iterations. The introduction section briefs on current challenges of requirement management, it effects on and quality and on trust between customer and software development organization.

Opening Activity (5 min ) The audience is divided into three teams. Each team to have its own Product Owner(1), Architect(1), Business Analyst(1), Scrum Master(1), Scrum Team(6-7) Each of the teams is handed over common case study with tasks defined for each role. (5 min ) Each of the teams is required to go through the case study and tasks.

Process 1. Defining Goals and Scope from Goals (15 min ) The concept and use of effect maps is covered in this section. The teams appreciate use of effect maps to clearly define goals, derive scope from these goals, learn to avoid listing features that do not provide value and know ways to prioritize based on business value 2. Writing Examples (15 min ) Each of the teams works collaboratively to list down examples that describe the problem defined in the case study. 3. Refining The Specification (10 min ) In this section, teams learn how good specifications are created, what to keep in mind and what to avoid when refining specifications. 4. Strategies for automating validation of specifications (10 min ) Here I present the strategies that can be used to automate validation of specifications. I also present one of the tools used for this purpose. The usage and working on the tool by the teams is not covered in the workshop. The tool to be used is Fitnesse(optional) 5. Strategies for validating frequently (5 min ) 6. Concept of Living Documentation (5 min ) Through this section, teams appreciate the evolution of documentation as related specifications are organized for a better understanding of a system.

Sharing Learnings (5 min )

Question-Answer Session (10 min )

Closure