Essential System Requirements: A Practical Guide to Event-Driven Methods

Bill Wiley has written a very important book! He brings to light key discoveries made during the structured revolution and explains them to us in the context of modern day object-oriented thinking -- but I get ahead of myself:Before objects, many great minds worked on the problem of how do we improve the process of analyzing and designing software systems." These methodologists integrated their discoveries under the umbrella called the structured methodology. When objects came along, the new generation of software experts and methodologists rejected all ideas associated with the structured revolution largely due to ignorance, or ego. While some of the basic notation of structured design did not fit object-oriented thinking, the deeper wisdom of how to approach systems and understand what needs to be built was still most applicable.Essential systems analysis, a core tool for thinking about systems, has been (PICK ONE: rediscovered, dusted off, repackaged, rehabilitated) by Bill at the perfect time for the evolution of object-oriented methodology maturity. With UML established, we are no longer arguing about how to express an idea and now must turn our attention to the harder questions of how to use UML to approach problems and in particular discover Use Cases. Bill's book answers these questions and his ideas feel as good to me as my grandfather's old hand plane -- both are time-tested tools to solve problems in a most elegant and effective manner.

Mr. Wiley takes an interesting, academic approach to defining requirements based upon event-driven methods. Essential System Requirements is "a breath of fresh air" that uses a variety of diagramming techniques including the UML, but does not push the UML or a set of vendors' tools as a silver bullet. The book does an outstanding job of tying together a sound toolbox approach to extracting requirements with the function point estimation method. The section on object-partitioned system responses is also very enlightening. A must read for the independent thinker!