Month: January 2019

Requirements Elicitation Techniques Part 3 – Benchmarking

Professor of Project Management Project Planning, Requirements Analysis

Planning

The technique of “Benchmarking” is sometimes used in the Requirements gathering process. You compare your company’s processes and performance metrics to industry best practices from other companies. The knowledge uncovered in these investigations can be used in process improvement initiatives or to solve thorny problems you encounter on your project. I have managed many projects where a typical question in a meeting is “What does Company X do in this case?”. “Company X” is typically the main competition for your company and is usually recognized as an industry leader in the area under study. You may or may not get “Company X” to speak with you on a particular topic, depending on the relationship and the level of competition.

Benchmarking can save a lot of time on a project by avoiding the “let’s reinvent the wheel” syndrome. If someone else has figured it out, why waste your own time? Now you may find their solution cannot be completely adapted to your specific situation but there are usually as least some pieces that can be used and be very valuable.

Benchmarking is a supplementary requirements technique. It will never be the only technique you use but can add important additional information to the requirements process. On every project you should at least ask yourself if Benchmarking can add value to the requirements process.

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Requirements Elicitation Techniques Part 2 – Acceptance Criteria

Professor of Project Management Project Planning, Requirements Analysis ,

Planning

If you search the Internet for “Acceptance Criteria” you will see definitions like this: “Acceptance Criteria are the conditions that a software product must satisfy to be accepted by a user, customer or external system.” There are no shades of grey, the condition either satisfies the criteria or not. There are no “90% satisfies”.

Acceptance Criteria should be established before development begins. The reason for this is that the criteria needs to guide the development. If you write them during or after the development, you will just be verifying what was built and not the customer intent.

Like all good business requirements, the criteria should be “what” not “how”. For example, you might state “Upon submission of the completed application a notification is sent to the Director”. You don’t want to state “Upon clicking ‘Submit’ an email is sent to the Director”. Avoiding implementation specifics opens up new possibilities for a design solution.

In many ways, the “Event/Response method” (see my prior posts on this topic) and “Acceptance Criteria” are very similar. With Event/Response, we document a triggering event, the data sent and who sends it, what we do with it, the outputs and who receives them. With Acceptance Criteria, many use the format “Given some precondition, when I do some action, I expect some result”. These are essentially the same things although Acceptance Criteria can be at a lower level (the Use Case and Functional Requirements level).

You do not approach your user or customer and ask “What are your acceptance criteria?”. This will mostly elicit blank stares. You will want to use other elicitation methods such as Event/Response and Use Cases, and the derive the Acceptance Criteria from there. You can do this by prioritizing your requirements (e.g. “priority 1 = must have or cannot go live, priority 2 = can go live without it but must have within 1 month of go live, priority 3 = nice to have if it fits within the budget and schedule”). In this case, priority 1 requirements are the acceptance criteria for go live and priority 2 requirements are the acceptance criteria for project completion.

Some examples of Acceptance Criteria:

  • If I am a System Administrator, I can add, update or delete accounts.
  • I can search for users by last name and can enter a partial string and receive the results of all that qualify
  • I can filter my staff by availability for a given shift

Requirements Elicitation Techniques Part 1 – Overview

Professor of Project Management Project Planning, Requirements Analysis

Planning

In the previous series of posts I introduced my favorite requirements elicitation technique, “Business Event/Response”. Of course there are many other techniques which can act either as complementary to or in place of “Business Event/Response”. The techniques you choose depend on many factors including the type of project, knowledge depth of the Subject Matter Experts (SME), the availability of documentation, time constraints, etc.

A skilled Project Manager that is also a seasoned Business Analyst is a very valuable commodity. I encourage all PM’s to increase their BA ability by reading books, attending webinars and seminars, and putting their new knowledge to practice. There is no substitute for actual work experience in this realm.

Here are the topics I will address in the series:

  • Part 1 – Overview
  • Part 2 – Acceptance Criteria
  • Part 3 – Benchmarking
  • Part 4 – Business Rules Analysis
  • Part 5 – Data Modeling
  • Part 6 – Document Analysis
  • Part 7 – Interviews
  • Part 8 – Non-functional Requirements
  • Part 9 – Observation
  • Part 10 – Prototyping
  • Part 11 – Root Cause Analysis
  • Part 12 – Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Part 13 – SWOT Analysis
  • Part 14 – Summary

Requirements Analysis Using Event / Response and Use Cases: Final Summary

Professor of Project Management Project Planning, Requirements Analysis , ,

Planning

In the preceding posts, I gave you some guidance on how to execute the Event/Response methodology for scope and requirements analysis. In this last of the series of posts on this topic, I will take the 5,000 foot view and put it all together in a summary of steps.

  • Step 1 – Define the Business Objectives (the measurable benefits realized after implementation). These will be used to verify the scope and requirements.
  • Step 2 – Define the Project Objectives (the products, services and/or results delivered at project implementation). These will also be used to verify scope and requirements.
  • Step 3 – The Context Diagram. Look at the area under study as an outsourced business, with Suppliers (of data) and Customers (recipients of data/information/results).
  • Step 4 – The Event List. This represents your “business model”. You define all of the events that “wake up” your business and require a planned response. In the prior posts, I presented a variety of techniques for fleshing out these events. Included in the Event List are your business processes and stakeholders.
  • Step 5 – Validate the Event Model. Compare your event scope with the Business and Project Objectives and verify with the Project Sponsor that all objectives are covered by this scope.
  • Step 6 – Construct Use Cases. Use the defined business processes in the Event Model as the starting point for creating Use Cases.
  • Step 7 – Test Planning and Execution. The Event Model is a wonderful framework in which to define your test scenarios and cases. Take advantage of all the work you did in the requirements phase to make your test planning and execution easier.

That’s it for this topic. I hope you found it informative and useful. I have used this technique successfully in many real-world projects.