Karl Wiegers and I are chipping away at Software Requirements, 3E, and well over 1/2 way done! He wrote a blog post for the Microsoft Press blog about our writing and collaboration process. He describes a bit about our decision to undertake the writing effort and how it works when we live far apart in Oregon and Texas. An interesting thing if you are going to co-author – make sure you have some confidence you will be able to collaborate successfully! Simply knowing you have interest and knowledge in the same topic isn’t sufficient. You need to explore enough to ensure things like:
- your writing goals align
- your ideas align
- you have a collaboration process that works for both of you
- you are both equally committed to the project (or agree on who will do the bulk of the work if not equal)
- and…you get along, so you can enjoy the project – because you will spend a lot of time on it
In the spirit of a good BA, Karl developed a swimlane diagram for our writing and collaboration process! Check out his post on much more about co-authoring Software Requriements, 3E.
