With the end of the year being extremely busy for all (myself included), we are going to make this tip a little light. I still wanted to kick off a little exercise...something to think about while you prepare for your 2003 projects.

The two anti-patterns groups previously discussed, Gap in Knowledge and Gap in Participation, primarily affect the functionality of the product. The reality is that they also affect the return on investment for the product at the project level. Gap in Process refers to the third and final group of anti-patterns. Its purpose is to help keep the process of developing the product moving and meeting all targets (e.g. quality, time, budget, resources); avoiding any risks that potentially affect the products return on investment.

Underestimating or overestimating the risks a business can tolerate will ultimately affect the success of the product. Project risks apply to the resources such as staff, budget and time, through each iteration of the product. The best control over these project risks is through an effective requirements process and the identification of inherent anti-patterns that could affect the product.

Last month's tip discussed how to identify when there has been a change in the requirements a.k.a. when a requirement supplier forgets to tell you about a change. January 2003's tip will discuss how to identify and document risks with countermeasures. We will discuss documenting risks as requirements before they occur (but not necessarily always at the beginning of the project or project phase).

As an exercise, take a look at some past projects. Think about what change in process could have prevented a failure to meet project type requirements. Also consider what type of anti-pattern could have been developed to assist in identifying requirements for that area.

If you have difficulty trying to define an anti-pattern for your project, please feel free to contact SBDi. We can give you ideas of common requirements-related mishaps, which can be avoided with properly developed and implemented anti-patterns. Or if you have an interesting scenario, SBDi may choose one as an example and develop the anti-pattern in a future tip.

SBDi is available to help educate teams in identifying changes in the requirement set and how to identify its impact and manage them.

Our services include:

• Education of the management and development team on the value of the development, implementation and use of anti-patterns.
• Teaching how to identify, develop, validate, and implement anti-patterns.
• Developing project specific anti-patterns.
• Developing a divisional or corporate process for the development and implementation of anti-patterns.
• Review of existing anti-patterns for quality.