Teams keen on improving team communication and
collaboration can utilize discussion forums to
ensure all team members are communicated with. This newsletter discusses:
- Improving requirements via discussion forums
- Improving coding via discussion forums
- Documenting retrospectives via discussion
forums
- Where to find discussion forum tools
Improving Requirements via Discussion Forums
Software
projects can be completed more quickly by collecting
solid requirements because re-work can be minimized.
A key to collecting solid requirements is to have
all stakeholder review the requirements.
Stakeholders includes product management, project
management, programming and quality assurance team
members. Once a requirement is created and
ready for review, use discussion forums to
communicate this to the stakeholders. As the
stakeholders review the requirement, they can post
their comments, questions, and concerns via the
discussion forum. Things stakeholders should
look for when reviewing requirements are
completeness, correctness, adherence to your
existing architecture, and testability. By
keeping these discussions in a discussion forum,
everyone is involved in the discussions and a
complete history of questions, issues and answers
are documented for later review. Below is an
example of someone asking a clarifying question
about a requirement and another team member
providing guidance:
Improving Coding via Discussion Forums
When in the coding phase, it is wise to
create a discussion forum for the release you are
working on. Teams can use discussion forums to
ask clarifying questions regarding requirements and
test cases. Teams can also post a brief
summary each day with their status. This can
include a short description of code modules affected
in each day's coding effort, defects fixed, etc.
Below is an example that shows that the developer is
posting his status for the day, identifying code
modules changed and defects fixed:
Documenting Retrospectives
via Discussion Forums
Once a software project is completed, it
is important to document what went right and what
went wrong with the project -- this is called a
retrospective. Below is an example of a
retrospective that was posted via a discussion
forum:
Where to find
Discussion Forum Tools
The screen shots above were from Software
Planner (http://www.SoftwarePlanner.com).
If you would like to see how Software Planner's
discussion forum tool works, navigate to
http://www.pragmaticsw.com/GuidedTours/Default.asp?FileName=DiscussionBoard.
If you wish to find free discussion forums, here are
a few:
