Howdy, folks. As some of you know, I have a new job. I'm now senior online editor at CIO.com (and more invisibly at CSOonline.com), where I can get into trouble in my very own blog (
http://blogs.cio.com/blog/37). I am, of course, still paying a lot of editorial attention to the software development community. It's just that now I have the ear of the boss.
Among the things that CIOs most desperately want to know -- really, they say this -- is what their development staff thinks, but doesn't SAY. At least, the developer won't say it directly to the CIO or other top management. So I'm starting a series of articles about "what CIOs really need to know about..." which will cover various topics. The first one is about software requirements.
My question to you is a very simple one.
If you could get your CIO to understand one thing, just ONE THING about software requirements, what would it be? And then, the obvious follow-up: why did you pick
that? War stories to illustrate your point would be great.
You can touch on anything to do with the software requirements process; I'm game for whatever you give me.
Ideally I would quote you by name and company and location ("Esther Schindler is a senior developer at the Groovy Corporation in Scottsdale Arizona") but as long as you give me some kind of context I'm willing to work without one. That is, I do need some identifying characteristics to give the article credibility ("Esther works at a large finance company in the Southwest") but I don't want you to lose your job when the CIO realizes that the developer quoted works for *her*! <grin> So please be sure to let me know how to refer to you in the article.
I'll be sure to stop by here (as I expect others want to participate in the conversation), but it'd be great if you could send me a private message. I don't want to miss any responses. Reply privately if that's easier, too.
I plan to work on this during the holiday and to collect responses over the next week or so. I'm hoping to publish the article on CIO.com by mid-January at the latest.
So: what clue would you like your CIO to get? about software requirements, that is?
Esther Schindler
senior online editor
CXO Media