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Acknowledgements
Preface
Part I: Negotiating a Common Understanding
1. Methodologies Aren't Enough
1.1 CASE, CAD, and the Cockroach Killer
1.2 Methods' Effects on Problems
1.3 Maps and Their Notation
1.4 Making Sure That Everyone Can Read the Map
1.5 Maps of Requirements Are Not Requirements
1.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
1.7 Summary
2. Ambiguity in Stating Requirements
2.1 Examples of Ambiguity
2.1.1 Missing requirements
2.1.2 Ambiguous words
2.1.3 Introduced elements
2.2 Cost of Ambiguity
2.3 Exploring to Remove Ambiguity
2.3.1 A picture of requirements
2.3.2 A model of exploration
2.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
2.5 Summary
3. Sources of Ambiguity
3.1 An Example: The Convergent Design Processes
Lecture
3.2 A Test for Attentiveness
3.3 The Clustering Heuristic
3.3.1 Observational and recall errors
3.3.2 Interpretation errors
3.3.3 Mixtures of sources of error
3.3.4 Effects of human interaction
3.4 Problem Statement Ambiguity
3.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
3.6 Summary
4. The Tried but Untrue Use of Direct Questions
4.1 Decision Trees
4.1.1 Order of questions
4.1.2 Traversing the decision tree: an example
4.2 Results of an Ambiguity Poll
4.3 What Could Possibly Be Wrong?
4.4 Real Life Is More Real Than We Like to
Think
4.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
4.6 Summary
Part II: Ways to Get Started
5. Starting Points
5.1 A Universal Starting Point
5.2 Universalizing a Variety of Starting Points
5.2.1 Solution idea
5.2.2 Technology idea
5.2.3 Simile
5.2.4 Norm
5.2.5 Mockup
5.2.6 Name
5.3 The Can-Exist Assumption
5.4 An Elevator Example
5.4.1 Naming our project
5.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
5.6 Summary
6. Context-Free Questions
6.1 Context-Free Process Questions
6.2 Potential Impact of a Context-Free Question
6.3 Context-Free Product Questions
6.4 Metaquestions
6.5 Advantages of Context-Free Questions
6.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
6.7 Summary
7. Getting the Right People Involved
7.1 Identifying the Right People
7.1.1 Customers versus users
7.1.2 Why include the users?
7.1.3 The Railroad Paradox
7.1.4 The product can create users
7.1.5 Are losers users?
7.2 A User-Inclusion Heuristic
7.2.1 Listing possible user constituencies
7.2.2 Pruning the user list
7.3 Participation
7.3.1 Who participates?
7.3.2 When do they participate?
7.3.3 How do we get their judgments?
7.4 Plan for Capturing Users
7.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
7.6 Summary
8. Making Meetings Work for Everybody
8.1 Meetings: Tools We Can't Live With, or
Without
8.1.1 A terrible, but typical, meeting
8.1.2 Meetings as measurements
8.2 Participation and Safety
8.2.1 Establishing an interruption policy
8.2.2 Setting time limits
8.2.3 Outlawing personal attacks and put-downs
8.2.4 Reducing pressure
8.2.5 Allowing time to finish, yet finishing
on time
8.2.6 Handling related issues
8.2.7 Amending the rules
8.3 Making It Safe Not to Attend a Meeting
8.3.1 Publishing an agenda and sticking to
it
8.3.2 Staying out of emergency mode
8.3.3 Handling people who don't belong
8.3.4 Including the right people
8.4 Designing the Meeting You Need
8.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
8.6 Summary
9. Reducing Ambiguity from Start to Finish
9.1 Using the Memorization Heuristic
9.2 Extending the Ambiguity Poll
9.3 "Mary had a little lamb" Heuristic
9.4 Developing the "Mary conned the trader"
Heuristic
9.5 Applying the Heuristics to the Star Problem
9.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
9.7 Summary
Part III: Exploring the Possibilities
10. Idea-Generation Meetings
10.1 A Typical Brainblizzard
10.2 First Part of the Brainstorm
10.2.1 Do not allow criticism or debate
10.2.2 Let your imagination soar
10.2.3 Shoot for quantity
10.2.4 Mutate and combine ideas
10.3 Second Part of the Brainstorm
10.3.1 Voting with a threshold
10.3.2 Voting with campaign speeches
10.3.3 Blending ideas
10.3.4 Applying criteria
10.3.5 Scoring or ranking systems
10.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
10.5 Summary
11. Right-Brain Methods
11.1 Mapping Tools
11.1.1 Sketching
11.1.2 Sketching Wiggle Charts
11.2 Braindrawing
11.3 Right-Braining
11.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
11.5 Summary
12. The Project's Name
12.1 Working Titles, Nicknames, and Official
Names
12.2 The Influence of Names
12.2.1 A naming demonstration
12.2.2 What naming accomplishes
12.3 The Naming Heuristic
12.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
12.5 Summary
13. Facilitating in the Face of Conflict
13.1 Handling Inessential Conflicts
13.1.1 Wrong time, wrong project
13.1.2 Personality clashes
13.1.3 Indispensable people
13.1.4 Intergroup prejudice
13.1.5 Level differences
13.2 The Art of Being Fully Present
13.3 Handling Essential Conflicts
13.3.1 Reframing personality differences
13.3.2 Negotiating
13.3.3 Handling political conflicts
13.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
13.5 Summary
Part IV: Clarifying Expectations
14. Functions
14.1 Defining a function
14.1.1 Existence Function
14.1.2 Testing for a function
14.2 Capturing All and Only Functions
14.2.1 Capturing all potential functions
14.2.2 Understanding evident, hidden, and frill
functions
14.2.3 Identifying overlooked functions
14.2.4 Avoiding implied solutions
14.2.5 The "Get It If You Can" List
14.3 Helpful Hints and Variations
14.4 Summary
15. Attributes
15.1 Attribute Wish List
15.2 Transforming the Wish List
15.2.1 Distinguishing between attributes and
attribute details
15.2.2 Uncovering attribute ambiguity
15.2.3 Organizing the list
15.2.4 Discovering insights from the transformed
list
15.3 Assigning Attributes to Functions
15.3.1 How attributes can modify functions
15.3.2 Gaining insights from the new function
15.4 Excluding Attributes
15.4.1 Categorizing into must, want, and ignore
attributes
15.4.2 Implicit versus explicit elimination
of attributes
15.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
15.6 Summary
16. Constraints
16.1 Defining Constraints
16.2 Thinking of Constraints as Boundaries
16.3 Testing the Constraints
16.3.1 Too strict?
16.3.2 Not strict enough?
16.3.3 Unclear?
16.3.4 Generating new ideas
16.4 Interrelated Constraints
16.5 Overconstraint
16.6 Psychology of Constraints
16.6.1 The tilt concept
16.6.2 Breaking constraints
16.6.3 The self-esteem bad-design cycle
16.7 Constraint Produces Freedom
16.7.1 Standards
16.7.2 Languages and other tools
16.8 Helpful Hints and Variations
16.9 Summary
17. Preferences
17.1 Defining a Preference
17.1.1 An example
17.1.2 The origin of preferences
17.2 Making Preferences Measurable
17.2.1 A reasonable approach to metrics
17.2.2 Making the preference measurable
17.3 Distinguishing Between Constraints and
Preferences
17.3.1 Is meeting the schedule a constraint?
17.4 Constrained Preferences
17.4.1 What's-it-worth? graphs
17.4.2 When-do-you-need-it? graphs
17.5 Reframing Constraints into Preferences
17.5.1 Trading off among preferences
17.5.2 Zeroth Law of Product Development
17.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
17.7 Summary
18. Expectations
18.1 Reasons to Limit Expectations
18.1.1 People are not perfect
18.1.2 People are not logical
18.1.3 People perceive things differently
18.1.4 Designers are people, too
18.2 Applying the Expectation Limitation Process
18.2.1 Generate a specific expectation list
18.2.2 The elevator example
18.2.3 Generalize the expectation list
18.2.4 Limit the expectations
18.3 Limitations Need Not Be Limiting
18.3.1 The wheelchair example
18.3.2 Keeping possibilities open
18.3.3 Include the source of the limitation
18.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
18.5 Summary
Part V: Greatly Improving the Odds of Success
19. Ambiguity Metrics
19.1 Measuring Ambiguity
19.1.1 Using the ambiguity poll
19.1.2 Applying the polling method
19.1.3 Polling on different bases
19.2 Using the Metric as a Test
19.2.1 Measuring three kinds of ambiguity
19.2.2 Interpreting the results
19.2.3 Information from clustering
19.2.4 Choosing the group to be polled
19.3 Helpful Hints and Variations
19.4 Summary
20. Technical Reviews
20.1 A Walkover Example
20.2 The Role of Technical Reviews
20.2.1 Formal and informal reviews
20.2.2 Technical reviews versus project reviews
20.3 Review Reports
20.3.1 Need for review reports
20.3.2 Creating the issues list
20.3.3 Technical review summary report
20.4 Principal Types of Review
20.4.1 Vanilla reviews
20.4.2 Inspections
20.4.3 Walkthroughs
20.4.4 Round robin reviews
20.5 Real Versus Ideal Reviews
20.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
20.7 Summary
21. Measuring Satisfaction
21.1 Creating a User Satisfaction Test
21.1.1 Test attributes
21.1.2 A custom test for each project
21.2 Using the Test
21.2.1 Benefits
21.2.2 Plotting shifts and trends
21.2.3 Interpreting the comments
21.2.4 Feelings are facts
21.3 Other Uses of the Test
21.3.1 A communication vehicle
21.3.2 Continue use throughout the project
21.3.3 Use by designers
21.4 Other Tests
21.4.1 Prototypes as satisfaction tests
21.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
21.6 Summary
22. Test Cases
22.1 Black Box Testing
22.1.1 External versus internal knowledge
22.1.2 Constructing black box test cases
22.1.3 Testing the test cases
22.2 Applying the Test Cases
22.2.1 Examples
22.2.2 Iterating tests and answers
22.2.3 Clearly specifying ambiguity
22.3 Documenting the Test Cases
22.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
22.5 Summary
23. Studying Existing Products
23.1 Use of the Existing Product as the Norm
23.2 Interviewing
23.2.1 What's missing in the new product?
23.2.2 Why is it missing?
23.2.3 What's missing in the old product?
23.2.4 What's missing in the old requirements?
23.3 Substituting Features for Functions
23.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
23.5 Summary
24. Making Agreements
24.1 Where Decisions Come From
24.1.1 Choices, assumptions, and impositions
24.1.2 Elevator design decision examples
24.1.3 Writing traceable requirements
24.2 Where False Assumptions Come From
24.2.1 Lack of valid information
24.2.2 Invalidation over time
24.2.3 The turnpike effect
24.2.4 Requirements leakage
24.3 Converting Decisions to Agreements
24.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
24.5 Summary
25. Ending
25.1 The Fear of Ending
25.2 The Courage to End It All
25.2.1 Automatic Design and Development
25.2.2 Hacking
25.2.3 Freezing requirements
25.2.4 The renegotiation process
25.2.5 The fear of making assumptions explicit
25.3 The Courage to Be Inadequate
25.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
25.5 Summary
Bibliography
Index
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