This book gives you a set of 4 simple rules that will morph your requirements for an IT solution into high quality requirement statements that are easily understood by all target audiences. The focus is to increase the "common understanding" between the author of a requirement and the solution providers (e.g., in-house or outsourced IT designers, developers, analysts, and vendors).The rules we present in this book will reduce the failure rate of projects suffering from poor requirements. Regardless of your job title or role, if you are tasked with communicating your future needs to others, this book will guide you step by step. It includes optional exercises with instant feedback to increase retention. WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?Anyone involved in capturing, writing, analyzing, or understanding requirements for Information Technology solutions, including (but not limited to):*Subject Matter Experts (SME)*Agile Product Owners*Business Process Managers*Business Process Users*Business Analysts*and anyone wearing the BA hatRegardless of your title or role, if you are involved in defining requirements, this book is for you. Specifically, this book will give you techniques to:*Express business and stakeholder requirements in simple, complete sentences*Write requirements that focus on the business need*Test the relevance of each requirement to ensure that it is in scope for your project*Translate business needs and wants into requirements as the primary tool for defining a future solution and setting the stage for testing*Create and maintain a question file to reduce the impact of incorrect assumptions*Minimize the risk of scope creep caused by missed requirements *Ensure that your requirements can be easily understood by all target audiences*Confirm that each audience shares a common understanding of the requirements*Isolate and address ambiguous words and phrases in requirements.*Use our Peer Perception technique to find words and phrases that can lead to misunderstandings. *Reduce the ambiguity of a statement by adding context and using standard terms and phrasesHOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS BOOK?To maximize the learning effect, you will have optional, online exercises to assess your understanding of each presented technique. You will run across chapter titles prefaced with the phrase “Exercise”. Those chapters contain a link to a web-based exercise that we have prepared to give you an opportunity to try the presented technique yourself.THIS BOOK IS PART OF A SERIES“How to Write Effective Requirements for IT – Simply Put!” is the second book in the series "Business Analysis Fundamentals - Simply Put!". This series gives you a basic understanding of many core concepts in business analysis. It also teaches how to do the most common business analysis activities. Each book has value on its own. It either provides an overview or demonstrates specific business analysis techniques. We do not expect everyone reading the series to become a professional business analyst, but it is a great first step. The world sorely needs good business analysts. Get your start with the series today!Book 1: Business Analysis DefinedBook 2: How to Write Effective Requirements for IT - Simply Put! Use Four Simple Rules to Improve the Quality of Your IT RequirementsBook 3: Requirements Elicitation Techniques - Simply Put! Helping Stakeholders Discover and Define Requirements for IT ProjectsBook 4: Data Flow Diagrams - Simply Put! Process Modeling Techniques for Requirements Elicitation and Workflow AnalysisBook 5: Functional and Non-Functional Requirements - Simply Put! Simple Requirements Decomposition / Drill-Down Techniques for Defining IT Application Behaviors and QualitiesBook 6: Requirements Elicitation Interviews and Workshops — Simply Put! Best Practices, Skills, and Attitudes for Requirements Gathering on IT Projects