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Rating: 
Summary: UML is just a tool, Wiley tells us how to use the tool.
Review: Bill Wiley has written a very important book! He brings to light key discoveries made during the structured revolution and explains them to us in the context of modern day object-oriented thinking -- but I get ahead of myself:Before objects, many great minds worked on the problem of how do we improve the process of analyzing and designing software systems." These methodologists integrated their discoveries under the umbrella called the structured methodology. When objects came along, the new generation of software experts and methodologists rejected all ideas associated with the structured revolution largely due to ignorance, or ego. While some of the basic notation of structured design did not fit object-oriented thinking, the deeper wisdom of how to approach systems and understand what needs to be built was still most applicable. Essential systems analysis, a core tool for thinking about systems, has been (PICK ONE: rediscovered, dusted off, repackaged, rehabilitated) by Bill at the perfect time for the evolution of object-oriented methodology maturity. With UML established, we are no longer arguing about how to express an idea and now must turn our attention to the harder questions of how to use UML to approach problems and in particular discover Use Cases. Bill's book answers these questions and his ideas feel as good to me as my grandfather's old hand plane -- both are time-tested tools to solve problems in a most elegant and effective manner.
Rating:
Summary: UML is just a tool, Wiley tells us how to use the tool.
Review: Bill Wiley has written a very important book! He brings to light key discoveries made during the structured revolution and explains them to us in the context of modern day object-oriented thinking -- but I get ahead of myself: Before objects, many great minds worked on the problem of how do we improve the process of analyzing and designing software systems." These methodologists integrated their discoveries under the umbrella called the structured methodology. When objects came along, the new generation of software experts and methodologists rejected all ideas associated with the structured revolution largely due to ignorance, or ego. While some of the basic notation of structured design did not fit object-oriented thinking, the deeper wisdom of how to approach systems and understand what needs to be built was still most applicable. Essential systems analysis, a core tool for thinking about systems, has been (PICK ONE: rediscovered, dusted off, repackaged, rehabilitated) by Bill at the perfect time for the evolution of object-oriented methodology maturity. With UML established, we are no longer arguing about how to express an idea and now must turn our attention to the harder questions of how to use UML to approach problems and in particular discover Use Cases. Bill's book answers these questions and his ideas feel as good to me as my grandfather's old hand plane -- both are time-tested tools to solve problems in a most elegant and effective manner.
Rating: 
Summary: Disapointing
Review: I found this book have a very old viewpoint on managing requirements. Especially for peoples who adopt OO analysis & design. The author separate strongly the data (with entity diagrams) and processing, using DFD which were left between OMT and UML. This book doesn't give me more or different value than Suzanne Robertson's book. The only exception is the 2 chapters on FPA evaluation that I found very clear and good.
Rating:
Summary: Disapointing
Review: I found this book have a very old viewpoint on managing requirements. Especially for peoples who adopt OO analysis & design. The author separate strongly the data (with entity diagrams) and processing, using DFD which were left between OMT and UML. This book doesn't give me more or different value than Suzanne Robertson's book. The only exception is the 2 chapters on FPA evaluation that I found very clear and good.
Rating:
Summary: Ties it all together!
Review: Mr. Wiley takes an interesting, academic approach to defining requirements based upon event-driven methods. Essential System Requirements is "a breath of fresh air" that uses a variety of diagramming techniques including the UML, but does not push the UML or a set of vendors' tools as a silver bullet. The book does an outstanding job of tying together a sound toolbox approach to extracting requirements with the function point estimation method. The section on object-partitioned system responses is also very enlightening. A must read for the independent thinker!
Rating:
Summary: Ties it all together!
Review: Mr. Wiley takes an interesting, academic approach to defining requirements based upon event-driven methods. Essential System Requirements is "a breath of fresh air" that uses a variety of diagramming techniques including the UML, but does not push the UML or a set of vendors' tools as a silver bullet. The book does an outstanding job of tying together a sound toolbox approach to extracting requirements with the function point estimation method. The section on object-partitioned system responses is also very enlightening. A must read for the independent thinker!
Rating: 
Summary: Some excellent content, but bad style
Review: This is a good book. It has all the information in it to facilitate gathering software requirements for pretty much any IT project. My problem with the book is the author's style, he just isn't very readable. There is a lot of passive voice and not very many examples of the ideas he presents. If there are examples, they tend to be collected at the back in an appendix where they are much less useful than they would be directly with the idea that needs an example. I feel that the author settled for a less than his best in this book, and frequently stops partway along a direction that would have been much better if it were carried through more fully. There is a little bit of covereage of Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD), but he gives only a handful of examples and then immediately give a diagram in a section with symbols that aren't covered in any of the previous examples. I was really looking forward to the function point covereage, but function points are covered only marginally well in the book, something that the author pretty much says himself in the first few paragraphs of the chapter on function points. The real strength of the book is in the ideas, which I found very useful. The business event approach is quite powerful and allows the breakdown of projects into independant pieces. Also, the author gives "tips" on project management on how to apply his methods. There are a number of tables and diagrams for representing requirements that were also helpful. A good effort, but I feel that it could have been much better. All the ideas where there, the author mentions them regularly, but just doesn't go all the way.
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