Customer Centered Products: Creating Successful Products Through Smart Requirements Management

A powerful system for getting the right requirements--and creating products faster, better...and cheaper!
"Never time enough to do it right, but always time enough to do it over." In today's "faster-better-cheaper-at-any-cost" world, this is not just a joke, but an all-too-frequent reality. And, most often, a poor understanding of the requirements for a product is the reason it must be done over.
CUSTOMER-CENTERED PRODUCTS is a highly practical new book that helps readers gain a clear understanding of how to elicit the right requirements early on in a project--and make the right product the first time. Packed with useful information, enlightening real-life examples, and money-saving solutions, this book shows readers how to:
* Identify where their current requirements process is weak
* Bridge communication breakdowns that lead to muddy requirements
* Eliminate costly mistakes and rework
* Improve product quality without increasing cost
* Use operational concepts to improve requirements quality
* Improve the fit between the product and the customers' needs
* Prove that faster, better, cheaper is possible, and more.

Shows how to define and understand the right requirements early in the product development cycle, providing tested methods for defining hardware and service products as well as software. Explains fundamentals of requirements definition and management, and shows how to analyze an organization's culture and work environment with an eye toward how it helps or hinders product development. Hooks is president and CEO of a training and consulting firm. Farry is an engineer and pilot, and cofounder and president of a bionics company.
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

"""Never time enough to do it right, but always time enough to do it over."" In today's ""faster-better-cheaper-at-any-cost"" world, this is not just a joke, but an all-too-frequent reality. And, most often, a poor understanding of the requirements for a product is the reason it must be done over.

Customer-Centered Products is a highly practical new book that helps readers gain a clear understanding of how to elicit the right requirements early on in a project--and make the right product the first time. Packed with useful information, enlightening real-life examples, and money-saving solutions, this book shows readers how to:

* Identify where their current requirements process is weak

* Bridge communication breakdowns that lead to muddy requirements

* Eliminate costly mistakes and rework

* Improve product quality without increasing cost

* Use operational concepts to improve requirements quality

* Improve the fit between the product and the customers' needs

* Prove that faster, better, cheaper is possible, and more."

This is a guide to eliminating the waste of time, money and effort resulting from poor product development. It provides product definition requirements needed at the start of any product development process.

"Ivy F. Hooks (Fair Oaks Ranch, TX) is president and CEO of Compliance Automation, Inc. She has provided training and consulting in requirements for a variety of corporations and government organizations, including Kodak and NASA.

Kristin A. Farry (Friendswood, TX) is an engineer with over two decades' experience in aerospace, robotics, and biomedical engineering."

"1. Requirements: Structure for Success

2. Why Johnny Can't Write Requirements: Cultural, Educational, and Management Influences of Requirements Definition

3. The View from the Top: Steps to Creating and Managing Good Requirements

4. Creating a Shared Vision: Scoping the Project Up Front

5. One Day in the Life of a Product: Using Operational Concepts to Improve Requirement Quality

6. Collision Course: Identifying and Managing Interfaces

7. Be Careful What You Ask For: Writing Good Requirements

8. Theirs But to Reason Why: The Value of Recording Rationale

9. Everything in Its Place: Levels, Allocating, and Tracing Requirements

10. But Will It Work? Thinking Ahead to Verification

11. A Needle in a Haystack: Formatting Requirements

12. Drawing a Line in the Sand: Preparing to Baseline Requirements

13. Not All Requirements Are Created Equal: The Case for Prioritizing Requirements

14. Keeping Sane: Automating Requirement Management

15. Death, Taxes, and Requirement Change: Managing Change

16. Cap'n, Are We There Yet? Measuring Requirement Quality

17. It Can Happen On Your Watch: Making Changes in an Organization's Requirement Definition Process"