Page 84 - Software and Systems Requirements Engineering in Practice

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determination is made as to whether a request is “in” or “out”; i.e.,
will or will not become part of the approved requirements set.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Method
QFD was developed by Drs. Shigeru Mizuno and Yoji Akao in an
effort to integrate customer needs into product designs [Akao 1990].
According to the QFD Institute, the QFD method:
2
1. Seeks out spoken and unspoken customer needs from the
fuzzy voice of the customer verbatim.
2. Uncovers “positive” qualities that wow the customer.
3. Translates these into design characteristics and deliverable
actions.
4. Builds and delivers a quality product or service by focusing
the various business functions toward achieving a common
goal—customer satisfaction.
As QFD is well documented, it will not be described here. QFD
is often part of a Six Sigma program [Mikel et al. 1999]. The “house
of quality” matrix (so named because the matrix shape resembles a
house) is a widely used technique for capturing unspoken customer
needs and then correlating them with requirements.
Brainstorming Sessions
Brainstorming sessions are widely used to elicit initial stakeholder
requests for products. They tend to take place with multiple
stakeholders or customers, and the sessions are usually managed by
experienced facilitators in one session over one or two days maximum.
The objective of a brainstorming session is to come up with new and
innovative ideas or product features in a very rapid period of time. A
brainstorming session tends to have a set of discrete, well-defined
activities. A capable facilitator is essential to the success of the session.
When defining ideas, it is important to avoid conflicts: e.g., one
participant disparaging the ideas of another. Since very senior people
can be in the session, it is important that they not intimidate the other,
less senior-level participants.
An interesting story was told to one author during his military
service. Military schools for senior officers often teach brainstorming
techniques. At one such class, an Air Force captain, who was a friend
of the author, engaged in a heated discussion with one of the
other participants. After the session was over, the captain went over
to the other participant to review their in-class discussion, only to
find out to his dismay that the other officer was a lieutenant general.
2 www.qfdi.org/