A Little Homework Prevents a Lot of Heartburn

"A requirements traceability matrix sounds hairy, but it’s a useful tool that monitors the connective tissue holding together requirements and your intent." Before running headlong into a project, it helps the cause if you determine the business requirements first. No one wants to waste time and energy working toward a goal that either doesn’t exist, changes several times, or is nowhere close to what’s needed. Homework is a tough thing to make yourself, or your team, do. How many times do we get an idea and then rush off to make it come alive – only to fall off pace due to unplanned changes along the way? You dramatically increase your chances of success by having business requirements mapped out in advance. Business requirements tell us the business need for the project or the reason for its existence. Everything from a hairstyling session, planning a wedding, or constructing a new home ... begins with an assessment of the requirements from the interested parties or ‘stakeholders’. The complexities of the undertaking and the number of stakeholders involved are the major determinants of these requirements. While your hairstylist has to work with you as the sole stakeholder, the builder may have to work with your family members and the wedding planner may require input from various parties (especially the mother of the bride…). Identifying requirements is the first step in building a business requirements plan. Start with a simple question, such as "why are we working on this project?" But don’t stop there. Keep asking questions until you have the answers. Gathering requirements will bring clarity to the endeavor. It is important to document requirements before they slip through the cracks and get lost in the details of the project. A requirements traceability matrix sounds hairy, but it’s a useful tool that monitors the connective tissue holding together requirements and your intent. The matrix keeps us on track and restricts scope creep. Each requirement has an owner who ensures objectives are completed as planned. Business requirements are shaped by the stakeholders’ expectations and desires. Project managers act as the bridge between the stakeholders and the team, to help distill expectations into the ‘needs’ that guide the team to develop the appropriate product. Requirements provide a holistic view of what is needed from the entire project and processes it entails along with risks and assumptions critical to the success of the project. [inlinead] A cautionary note is in order. One is tempted to separate the needs from the wants, i.e., the ‘must haves’ from the ‘nice to have’ elements. We may lead ourselves to believe that such an approach will permit the use of the entire range of options available as the project moves along. However, by definition, a project should have well defined goals. An over-inclusive approach sets up the business requirements diffusely. This invites trouble in the form of ‘watermelon projects’ that look like they are progressing well while trouble is brewing under the surface, as I discussed last month (see my article on the Watermelon problem). A missed requirement can be very costly to the whole initiative and disastrous for a project leading it to complete failure. Collect requirements at the beginning, from all stakeholders. Sometimes you have to be creative while doing this because what they expect is not necessarily what they want. Decode this information like this: Interviews / Focus groups: Direct conversations with stakeholders elicit requirements. Nominal group technique: Brainstorming sessions bring all participants to the same platform to screen the requirements for a given project. Mind Maps: A pictorial representation of all ideas represents requirements. Affinity Diagrams: Similar ideas are grouped under common themes to more easily articulate different categories of requirements. Prototype: A working model or simulation of the product is developed by incorporating feedback from the stakeholders of a project. A large group of stakeholders can drive conflict. This can be resolved either by consensus or majority support on a given decision. But the focus should always be to resolve competing demands within the parameters of the scope. This is a balancing act that every project manager goes through in the progression of a project by prioritizing the requirements. In the event of complicated issues, refer to the business case, the project constraints and the scope to resolve competing requirements before taking issues to upper management. If the requests do not fall under the scope as documented in the project charter then maybe it’s an indication of a new project. It is critical to get requirements evaluated against the business case, as clear and complete as possible, upfront. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and nowhere is that old saying more meaningful than in developing a clear set of business requirements before starting a project.

A Little Homework Prevents a Lot of Heartburn

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