The Secret to Keeping Your Mission–Critical Applications Always Successful, Always Meeting Business Needs Well

software designed to automate or facilitate one or more mission–critical business processes of an enterprise, in order to make the enterprise operate more effectively and efficiently

team that is responsible for keeping a mission–critical application successful, meeting business needs well

person that is a member of a mission–critical application team

advancing a software along its change path — from product inception until product end of life (EOL) — in order to keep it meeting business needs well

See: WholeTEAM Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Model

decision regarding a product's feature, function, or capability, i.e., its functionality

good decisions regarding what changes to make to one's mission–critical applications, and when to make the changes; where change means a set of functional design modifications in order to address one or more business problems or to meet one or more business needs well

making decisions regarding what changes to make to an application and when to make the changes; where change means a set of functional design modifications in order to address one or more business problems or to meet one or more business needs well

keeping track of the changes that are to be made, that are being made, and that have been made to an application

WholeTEAM is built on the following three premises:

Premise 1

For any enterprise to thrive today in the digital age it is vital that it keep its mission–critical applications always* successful, always meeting business needs well.

Premise 2

To keep a mission–critical application always successful, always meeting business needs well, a product team needs to have GOOD REQUIREMENTS.

Premise 3

Requirements definition is uniquely a whole-team activity*. In other words, requirements definition is uniquely an activity that needs the participation of the whole product team, i.e., of each and every product team member.

Given the above three premises are true, we can conclude the following:

In order to have GOOD REQUIREMENTS a product team must follow a requirements definition and management (RDM) process that is simple, effective, and efficient, where:

• simple means easy to understand and easy to follow,

• effective means takes into account the input of the whole product team—of each and every product team member—oneself included if and only if oneself is a member of the product team, and

• efficient means incurs minimal cost with respect to valued resources such as time and money.

For a reference model of such a process—a "whole–team" RDM process—see:

WT2024.FP>3.3: WholeTEAM Requirements Definition and Management (RDM) Process

Following such a process, or, for short, "wholeteaming," enables one to have GOOD REQUIREMENTS and helps one keep one's mission–critical application meeting business needs well, leading to organizational performance.

Conversely, not following such a process, i.e., not wholeteaming, causes one to struggle with requirements and results in a mission–critical application that does not meet business needs well, leading organizations to underperform.

Wholeteaming — and keeping one's mission–critical application always successful, always meeting business needs well — is a digital age imperative.

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