Happy New Year all!
This blog is aimed at students on the current (2010K) presentation of M883 but comments and questions are welcome from anyone.
TMA02 is approaching fast, and I am happy to see there is a good deal of activity in the wiki groups. It is only natural that you are thinking of the collaboration first, but I would urge you to think a little about Question 2 before you rush off to think about your functional requirements in Q3: Q2 gives you valuable context, it is where you develop the mental maps that will lead you to the functional requirements.
In all the TMAs, but maybe most importantly in this one because we are now at the very core of the course, questions 2 and 3 lead you through a part of the requirements' analysis process: here setting the context, finding the business events, developing the business use cases into product use cases and on to functional requirements and then refining that list within the collaborative groups.
If you follow the process you will find that functional requirements flow quite naturally from the business events in which your particular actor is involved. Trying to do it backwards is much more difficult!
Of course, there is an important caveat: this is not a reason for failing to meet the deadlines you have all agreed for yourselves.
It does however provide a natural path for your learning in this area, and will make the TMA seem a little easier!