For some projects you may need to gather information from many people in a short time. When you have this condition, surveys and questionnaires can be very efficient.

First lets define the terms. A survey encompasses all aspects of the research process (design, construction, sampling method, data collection and response analysis). A questionnaire is a tool used for a survey and is a set of questions with a choice of answers.

Let’s look at the steps to conducting a requirements gathering survey:

• Design – You will need the answer to questions such as “What are the objectives?”; “What media will be used?”; “Who will it be sent to?”; “How long will be given to respond?”; “What will you do with non-responders?”; “Who will compile and analyze the data?”
• Construction – “Who will determine the questions to ask?”; “How many questions will be asked?”; “Will you allow open-ended responses?”; “Who will create and distribute the questionnaire?”. A tool such as Survey Monkey can be useful.
• Sampling Method – You will need to define the target population. If the entire population is sufficiently small, you can include everyone. If the population is large, you will need to use statistical sampling methods. Consult the statistician on your team or company for advice on the various methods.
• Data Collection – The method of data collection should have been determined in design. Collect and summarize the data as a prerequisite to response analysis.
• Response Analysis – This ties in to the objectives you defined in design. The method and people involved were determined in design. The responses are used to guide the direction of the requirements.

A reminder that my book “Project Management For The Real World” is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The purpose of root-cause analysis is to determine the underlying source of a problem under study. Doing this will help ensure the requirements attack the real problem and not just the symptoms.

A critical element is to challenge the current business thinking and processes. You want to overcome the “we’ve always done it that way” answer to the question “Why do you do this?”. I recently managed a project where it took interviews with dozens of people to finally get the answer to the question of why the pay week started on a Saturday instead of Sunday where the sales week started.

The steps to root cause analysis are:

• Define the problem under study and understand the impact
• Analyze the problem to determine the root cause
• Agree on solutions to prevent the problem from occurring

One technique to analyze the root cause is the “five whys” to explore the nature and true cause of a problem. This means repeatedly asking “why” after a question is answered until you uncover the real root cause. It may be more or fewer than five, but five is a good rule of thumb.

You can create a visual of your “five whys” analysis using a “Cause Map”. A Cause Map is simply a block on the left that identifies the problem, an arrow labeled “why” going left to right to another block that answers the question, then an arrow labeled “why” going left to right to the next answer and so on until the root cause is identified.

Root Cause Analysis is a good addition to your requirements analysis repertoire. If your project is not addressing the true root causes of the problem definition then you are unlikely to achieve the defined business objectives.

A reminder that my Kindle book “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn



Prototypes are the shell of an actual production application and are used to provide insight into the look, feel and flow of an application. The main purpose is to gather requirements related to the user interface. A “throw away” prototype seeks to quickly uncover and clarify system interface requirements. It is especially useful in cases where the most efficient workflow can only be discovered with hands-on experience.

Some have made the mistake of thinking prototyping is all you need to do to gather requirements. This will almost always be a costly mistake! Other requirements techniques will need to be used to get a complete set.

When you obtain the user interface requirements using prototyping, the next step is to integrate these requirements with your use cases, scenarios, data model and business rules. Your new discoveries will usually result in changes to previously gathered requirements.

There are two categories of prototypes used to uncover functional scope:

1. Horizontal Prototype – models a shallow and wide view of the system’s functionality. It typically does not have any business logic running behind the visualization.
2. Vertical Prototype – models a deep and narrow slice of the system’s functionality. There usually will be some business logic built to uncover complex requirements.

It is a judgment call as to whether or not to use prototyping on a particular project. You must weigh factors such as the importance of the user interface, the clarity of the requirements gathered via other methods, the difficulty in building the prototype, and time constraints.

A reminder that my book “Project Management For The Real World” is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

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