Get Started With AI in Requirements Management
Leverage AI to improve your requirements practices, not replace them.
The first big challenge is how to get started. There are tools and vendors that offer significant benefits to productivity, but organizations don’t know how to use them to their advantage.
With things moving so quickly, organizations may throw a lot of time, money, and effort at AI to keep up with competitors. If they don’t begin by defining how they plan to use it or what needs they hope to address, these resources are ill-spent.
There is always the fear that AI will get rid of all jobs in any category that it moves into.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Requirements management will always need the human element. AI creates an opportunity where business analysts (BAs) can focus on the activities that matter. If you learn how to leverage AI to automate low-value requirements management activities, you can free up capacity for higher-value work to be done.
Impact and Result
AI doesn’t mean automating everything or that BA roles disappear. Quite the opposite! To thrive, BAs will have to adapt and determine how and when to leverage AI to reduce time and effort spent on low-value tasks, freeing up capacity to focus on higher-value analysis and insights.
Your AI is only as good as the data used to train it. Embedding mature practices in the learning models ensures a high-value, high-quality result. Business analysis has a big role to play in this regard.
There's a right way to approach AI adoption. Charging in without knowing what problem you are trying to solve or the benefits you are looking to achieve wastes time and valuable resources. Embracing AI blindly is as effective as ignoring it altogether.
Workshop: Get Started With AI in Requirements Management
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Pre-Work
The Purpose
- Set the context to assess the risk tolerance and readiness of the organization to integrate AI into their requirements management practices.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Have a baseline of how ready your organization is to leverage AI.
Activities
Outputs
Complete the AI risk assessment.
- A completed AI risk assessment
Complete the AI in requirements management readiness assessment.
- A completed AI readiness assessment
Module 2: Build the Case for AI
The Purpose
- Lay the foundation for AI usage, discussing the pros and cons, costs and benefits, and excitement and fears for this new way of working.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A review of the risk and readiness assessments
- An understanding of the current state of the organization from a people, process, and culture perspective
Activities
Outputs
Review your business context.
- An understanding of how AI aligns to organizational attitudes toward risk
Understand the impacts of AI in requirements management.
- Recognition of initial readiness of AI adoption and any significant gaps.
Discuss fears associated with new technologies.
Explore the risks associated with AI.
Discuss organizational readiness for AI.
Module 3: Define Your Future State
The Purpose
Support building the bridge from the current state to the future state.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Exploring AI use cases for requirements management
- Exploring tools to help solve problems or enable opportunities
Activities
Outputs
Discuss current gaps in your organization.
- A defined set of guiding principles for AI usage
Define your AI guiding principles.
- A list of AI use cases
Explore potential AI use cases.
- A list of potential AI tools
Prioritize AI use cases.
- A selected AI project
Discuss available tools.
Select your pilot project.
Module 4: Prepare for Your Pilot
The Purpose
Put the pieces in place for your team to prepare to run its first pilot project.
Key Benefits Achieved
A shared understanding of team needs and composition, timelines, and success criteria
Activities
Outputs
Assemble your executive communication deck.
- A completed executive communication deck
Discuss your project team composition.
- A pilot project timeline and success criteria
Define your pilot project timelines.
- A pilot project timeline and success criteria
Define your project success criteria and hypothesis.
- A pilot project timeline and success criteria
Planning your next steps.
- A pilot project timeline and success criteria
Module 5: Next Steps and Wrap-Up
The Purpose
Complete deliverables so that you are ready to run your first AI pilot project.
Key Benefits Achieved
A document to communicate with executives about the value and benefits of AI in requirements management
Activities
Outputs
Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.
- Completed executive communication deck and deliverables
Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.
- AI roadmap for requirements management
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Make the case for AI in requirements management
- Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
- Call 2: Discuss current attitudes toward risk with AI.
- Call 3: Discuss your AI readiness.
Guided Implementation 2: Define your requirements management AI future state
- Call 1: Identify AI gaps in data, governance, executive support, team capabilities, and alignment to strategy.
- Call 2: Discuss your AI guiding principles and usage policies.
Guided Implementation 3: Build and deploy a requirements management AI pilot plan
- Call 1: Discuss and prioritize use cases.
- Call 2: Select and plan your AI pilot project, and define success criteria.
- Call 3: Summarize results and plan next steps.
Contributors
- Emal Bariali, Business Architect & Business Analyst, Bariali Consulting
- AJ Hawley, Founder, Trendsparency
- Fabricio Laguna, Professional Speaker, Consultant, and Trainer, TheBrazilianBA.com
- Christina Lovelock, Business Analysis Leader/Author/Speaker/Coach
- 5 anonymous contributors
- 19 anonymous survey respondents
Manage Requirements in an Agile Environment
Improve Requirements Gathering
Modernize Your Corporate Website to Drive Business Value
Develop APIs That Work Properly for the Organization
Implement and Mature Your User Experience Design Practice
Make the Case for Enterprise Business Analysis
Get Started With AI in Requirements Management
