Lately, I was required to submit to some necessary S.D.L.C. training program in my big time corporate day job. Yes, once again “big brother” is necessitating the use of some all-encompassing, magic S.D.L.C. strategy, and don’t worry mandatory templates are included! In reality, there is nothing new here and nothing to be fearful about. This is a part of life in the ‘big city’ when you have a corporate IT Software job. Instead of moaning about it, I would ask you to decide how to modify the templates so that you approach your work however you please, but at the same time keeping your status as a good corporate citizen.
Corporate templates are not all bad. In fact, they often help create some consistency and satisfy some of the legal obligations we have to meet in the IT World. But, the downside is it can encourage a more narrow view of the problem you are trying to solve. Instead of thinking in the context of the solution functioning in the real world, it is enticing to think in terms of filling in the blanks or checking boxes. Still it can be nice not to have completely reinvent the wheel with every project.
But, my own perspective is that there is the right device for each job. You should use different techniques to document the required features for an on-line shopping cart than a point of sale ad-hoc reporting system. With enterprise templates the norm is an artifact that is meant to satisfy all types of solutions. Many of the pieces are not going to be appropriate to your particular venture. I recommend keeping the core of the document and its title (F.R.D., F.S.D., Fred, etc) in tack and removing the portions that are not appropriate for your venture and adding the sections that are appropriate to your venture. You should keep the powers to be happy, and at the same time be free to think outside the box and provide the audience of your documents, what they will need to do their jobs.
No matter how you reconstruct the required template or format, make sure you follow these two principals:
1. Have Traceability Make sure that that you can show how each system function ties back to a business requirement.
2. Be All-inclusive and fully-exhaustive This is a topic that is suitable of its own post. But, the point is as a software or business professional you need to be a software professional. Do not take one-line requirements from the business as is. Make the effort to discover what is missing, and ensure that all the information and initially undocumented scenarios get captured. Usually this is where typical corporate template is not very good at all.
Ok that wraps up this article, good luck to everyone in fighting the power! Stick with this approach and you will be able to think outside of the box and not waste hours in silly academic debate over document formatting.
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