Chris Rupp: Requirements Engineering and Management

The manual for requirements in every situation

For more than a quarter of a century, SOPHIST has been working intensively on the topics of requirements and systems engineering. 27 years in which we have gathered several centuries of consulting/project experience and led countless projects to success. 
Being a consultant always holds new surprises in store, because even in requirements and systems engineering, the concrete procedure must be adapted and optimised based on the concrete circumstances of the customer.
Chris Rupp's book "Requirements-Engineering und -Management" lies on a table next to a laptop and a cappuccino
Even today, we are still researching new methods, techniques and procedures and are constantly incorporating the experiences of our consultants into these considerations. All this is owned to the philosophy (of the historical Sophists): "Questioning the old for the search of something better." 
Over the years, we have built up an immense accumulation of experience, knowledge and above all, skills from projects in a wide variety of sectors and domains. From our home based in Nuremberg, our consultants are bringing the gREat message into the development projects of this world to crack the toughest problems. In the process, we always return home with new insights, good practices and satisfied customers.
We have compiled all this know-how and poured it into the new, heavily revised edition of our classic book „Requirements-Engineering und -Management“ (eng.: Requirements engineering and management; only available in German). Blood, sweat and tears - of course metaphorically - have gone into the creation process. A team out of fourteen SOPHIT authors have spent several months of work and time in countless discussions to make the best possible new edition for the readers with the SOPHIST quality standard. 

Requirements - the base for all other development activities

From the last 27 years one of the most important insights is that the success of a development project stands and falls with the quality of requirements engineering. However, not every development project is the same, which means that requirements engineering also differs considerably from project to project - both in scope and in concrete implementation. 
For an agile project in a less regulated area, communicating the requirements in the form of user stories or using story maps is more important than detailed documentation.
Projects that have a clear problem definition and strict regulatory requirements regarding traceability, for example detailed documentation, must meet the regulatory requirements. 
The fact is that regardless of the specific procedure or context of a development, the requirements are the base for all other development activities like architecture, design, implementation, testing, maintenance or even support. You can imagine that the quality of this foundation has an immense impact on the overall development and therefore you should make sure that you base your development on a solid foundation of requirements. 

What you can expect in the book

Our book "Requirements engineering and management - the manual for requirements in every situation" has the insights to provide you with backgrounds, strategies, clear concepts and tips for the pragmatic execution of your requirements - from the determination of knowledge, to the derivation of good requirements, to documentation and communication, to management in the classical and agile context. 
An introductory motivation is followed by a description of the basic discipline and the most important concepts of requirements engineering. The subsequent knowledge determination is all about gathering the most important information you need to start a successful project. Build on this, we describe ways and procedures for deriving good requirements. This way you move from the determined information to requirements that can be used for your development. The focus is on the analysis of the requirements and the question: "What is the actual requirement? “. Once you have identified the actual requirements, it is important to document and/or communicate them adequately and in a form that makes sense to you. For this purpose, we will introduce you to various methods and templates, from user stories to UML diagrams to the classic SOPHIST MASTeR template for formulating requirements. Where requirements are documented, you also have to manage them. The focus is on structuring or representing the totality of your requirements. Of course, we also dedicate ourselves to the maintenance and collection of additional information that is valuable for you regarding your requirements, such as history, traceability or other attributes. 
 
New or significantly expanded topics in the 7th edition include
 
  • systems engineering, 
  • requirements engineering in the context of digitalisation/smart ecosystems, 
  • variant management, 
  • implementation strategies and the 
  • use of videos in requirements engineering.  
 
A continuous example accompanies you through the book chapters, outlining different constellations of development projects within three scenarios. New to this edition are videos embedded directly in the text as QR codes in the physical book and as hyperlinks in the PDF or e-pub version of the book. 
The content is divided into a total of 27 chapters and is peppered with expert opinions, tips & tricks for contemporary requirements engineering. 

Further information about our book and free additional content can be found on the SOPHIST website.

Chris Rupp
Author: Chris Rupp - SuperSOPHIST (formally: founder and managing partner), chief consultant, coach and trainer. In 30 years of professional life, she has accumulated quite a bit
 
  • ... one company 
  • ...6 books 
  • ...50 employees 
  • ...countless articles and lectures 
  • ...and an incredible amount of experience. 
 
My passion for project consulting can be blamed on the fact that I am not "only" managing, but I am also very close with the customer while working on projects. Implementing good ideas in such a way that developers, contractual partners and directly and indirectly affected users have the feeling that they have an intelligent, well thought-out and useful product in front of them is the vision that drives me. I work with a wide variety of methods and approaches from the agile and non-agile fields. In order to standardise the qualifications of requirements engineers/business analysts, I founded the IREB e. V. (International Requirements Engineering Board) and led it for many years.
Keywords: Project management, requirements engineering, recommendation

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For better readability, we usually only use the generic masculine form in our texts. Nevertheless, the expressions refer to members of all genders.