Requirements Gathering for Small Enterprises
Right-size the guidelines of your requirements gathering process.
Contributors
- Douglas Van Gelder, IT Manager, Community Development Commission of the County of Los Angeles
- Michael Lyons, Transit Management Analyst, Metropolitan Transit Authority
- Ken Piddington, CIO, MRE Consulting
- Thomas Dong, Enterprise Software Manager, City of Waterloo
- Chad Evans, Director of IT, Ontario Northland
- Three anonymous contributors
Your Challenge
- Strong business requirements are essential to solution delivery – inadequate requirements are the number one reason that projects fail.
- Organizations need a consistent, repeatable, and prescriptive set of guidelines that inform how business requirements gathering should be conducted.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
A successful requirements gathering practitioner is someone who has found balance between communication, documentation, collaboration, and control. For small enterprises, that balance should sway towards communication over documentation and collaboration over control.
Impact and Result
- Create a playbook that walks the practitioner through elicitation, analysis, and validation.
- Outline the degree of process rigor throughout these steps and shape your requirements gathering process to fit your common scenarios.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why consistent requirements gathering is so critical and understand how Info-Tech’s methodology helps you right-size your process guidelines.
1. Lay your foundations
Determine the initial process flow and guidelines for requirements gathering.
3. Analyze and validate
Create requirement packages fit for purpose.
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You can start as early as tomorrow morning. Our analysts will explain the process in your first call.
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Each call will focus on explaining the material and helping you to plan your project, interpret and analyze the results of each project step, and setting the direction for your next project step.
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Module 1: Lay Your Foundations
The Purpose
Understand the goals, constraints, and different requirements scenarios your team faces.
Key Benefits Achieved
Initial process guidelines align to requirements scenarios.
Activities
Outputs
Define Goals and Metrics
- Determine challenges with current state
- Set your goals and metrics
Select Requirements Scenarios
Create Process Flow
- Develop high-level process flow and guidelines
Add Collaboration, Communication, Control, and Documentation
Module 2: Build Your Elicitation Framework
The Purpose
Understand the techniques for planning and conducting requirements elicitation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Elicitation frameworks align to requirements scenarios.
Activities
Outputs
Review & Select Elicitation Techniques
- Develop an elicitation framework with appropriate techniques and requirement models
Review & Select Requirements Models
- Elicitation Techniques & requirement Model Guide
Create a Requirements Gathering Elicitation Plan for Your Project
- Project Elicitation Schedule
Update Process Guidelines
Module 3: Elicit Requirements
The Purpose
Use an example project to test elicitation framework, techniques, and models.
Key Benefits Achieved
Experience with elicitation and modelling techniques.
Activities
Outputs
Practice Using Interviews With Business Stakeholders to Build Use Case Models.
- Gain experience with stakeholder interviews
Practice Using Table-Top Testing With Business Stakeholders to Build Use Case Models.
- Produce use case models
Retrospective and Update Process Guidelines
Module 4: Analyze and Validate
The Purpose
Refine and prioritize requirements and create scenario-appropriate requirements packages.
Key Benefits Achieved
Refinement and prioritization techniques and requirement package guidelines.
Activities
Outputs
Categorize and Consolidate Requirements
- Refined requirements
Prioritize Requirements
- Prioritized requirements
Define and Populate Requirements Package
- Scenario-appropriate requirements packages
Finalize Requirement Gathering Playbook
- Requirement Gathering Playbook
Develop Requirements Gathering Action Plan