HFOOAD Chapter 2 – Give Them What They Want

The requirements

This is a topic that we’ve seen in our introductory course on Software. It is a really big and important concept that all sofware engineers need do know. In projects that I’ve had the requirements are probably one of the hardest things to get right. Most of the time we come back and make some adjustments.

The customer doesn’t really know what he wants

This is something that makes laying out the requirements very difficult. How can the developer define the requirements when even the customer doesn’t know them either. Maybe that’s why most of the time Apple doesn’t listen to its customers altogether.

The use cases

This is also a topic we saw in an earlier class. Although the book covers three things that a use case must have that I didn’t know about. Basically the use case must add value to the product. Have a clear starting and stoping point and finally the initiator must be an outside trigger.

Another thing that captured my attention was that the use cases actually help to find things that the customer didn’t tell you. That is very useful. Writing use cases can also find holes in your requirements. In conclusion use cases are very important for the product to fulfill the customer’s needs.