Summary of the Parts that Make BambooRM™ Whole: Part III
Published 04/19 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
Functional Requirements...
So far we have discussed how to use the built in discussion board for your projects and how it can be utilized to eliminate mass email exchanges containing information related to your project. We also pointed out that it allows you to maintain your discussion data in one easy to access location. We then talked about how our sample team was able to use the discussion board; you guessed it, to actually discuss the project requested from their customer. After that we showed you how our sample project team was able to take discussion information or items from the discussion and then incorporate them into requirements for their project. Now in this week's blog we are going to create our functional requirements show you some sample functional requirements for the business requirements we now have.
Functional what...
By now we all know what a requirement is and why they are important to projects. Equally important are functional requirements. But what are functional requirements? Well, by definition a functional requirement can be described as, details of the deliverable described in ordinary, non-technical language that is understandable to the customer. Think about it this way, a business requirement is the "what" and the functional requirement is the "how".
In our sample project we have determined that we have three basic requirements for this project to be successful.
Now that we have determined our business requirements, we need to describe how we are going to achieve or deliver on said requirements. The functional steps required to deliver said requirements...the "how".
In looking at our sample project we have confirmed the following requirements:
- Deploy and configure the server infrastructure
- Create and configure a shared service provider
- Create site collections and SharePoint sites
Looking at the requirements, for this sample project, It's easy to see that two of the requirements are dependent on the other before they can actually be followed through on. With that in mind, we might want to consider grouping all of our functional requirements together based on the requirements they are associated with. For this sample project I'm going to create phases for my functional requirements. In my mind this will help me traceability which will allow stakeholders and customers ease with which to follow your projects requirements gathering process.
Well how do I do that?
By default you are generated sample functional groups. You may decide to actually use the predetermined groups or you may decide to modify them; you might even decide to just delete them altogether and create your own. It's up to you and your method or style of requirements gathering. However we want to highlight how easy it is for us to change the predetermined functional groups to fit our requirement gathering needs. To do this we just access the functional requirements tab and select the functional group link
As you can see I have already created the three functional groups I want to associate my functional requirements to. They are phase 1 -2 -3 with a description related to what's required. This was achieved by clicking on the before mentioned sample groups and editing them to fit my projects needs.
I would also like to mention that like almost all of our lists in BambooRM you have the versioning history feature. Notice that the versioning information contains the following, who actually created the item, anytime the item was modified and by who, what various changes were made, and of course all items are time stamped with date and time. If needed we have the ability to roll back to previous versions by clicking on the date that represents the information you would like to roll back to. For example, if I wanted to roll the below functional group back to the title, "Functional Group 1" I would hover over the date, 2/10/2010, and then select Restore.
This will roll back the requirement group I'm currently modifying back the data content of 2/10/2010. I'm pretty sure you understand this; it's pretty self explanatory...Okay now let's jump forward and get into actually hammering out our functional requirements.
As you can see in the screen shot above, I have all ready created quite a few functional requirements for my sample project. By clicking on one of the functional requirements, for this example we'll pick "confirm servers meet hardware and software requirements", you will notice that once a functional requirement has been created you will always retain the ability to edit or modify it.
We just discussed versioning; you can also set up alerts, create a review workflow, delete and edit the functional requirement. To do any of these you simply click on the options you want to configure, modify, or remove then select the appropriate option.
Creating a new functional requirement just requires you to click on the New Item button and fill out the necessary information.
Here we have an open functional requirement with all the necessary data filled in. Of course we have the Title, the Description, Difficulty of the requirement, Status, the potential Risk level, Owner, Priority, and the Estimated Total Hours. The remaining fields I would like to discuss in more detail. They are Functional Group, Parent Reference, Parent Business Requirement, and Discussion Item. All of these fields give you the ability to connect all the elements together, which in turn allows for greater traceability.
We have already discussed the Functional Group aspect and how it can be used for project clarity by associating your Functional Requirement to a Functional Group. What about this Parent Reference field? Well, the Parent Reference field was created in-order to give you the ability to associate Functional Requirements or a Parent Functional Requirement to Child or Sub-Requirements. Wait...what? Okay think about it this way, when you are determining your Functional Requirements you conclude that there need to be steps done in-order to complete or achieve the original Functional Requirement, thus making the original a Parent Functional Requirement and the associated steps a Child or Sub-Requirement.
The Parent Business Requirement allows you to associate your Functional Requirement to the appropriate Business Requirement. The Discussion item field allows you to associate any and all discussions related to any particular requirement. The importance of these "association fields" is the fact that you are given the opportunity to quickly associate all related items together which in turn leads to enhanced traceability.
Why is that so important?
Looking at this screen shot you'll notice by default, all of your functional requirements are laid out in the default "all items" view.
You can see all my functional requirements, great. There is a new item, which has a parent reference, great. But, where is this added value you spoke of a minute ago?
Okay, here is where the parent reference field plays a big role. Looking at the above screen shot I would like to point your attention to the option for this list. By clicking on this feature your list view changes to an outline view.
This view gives you an easy to follow listing of all your Functional Requirements broken down into your Functional Groups with all associated Functional Requirements. This is where designating a parent reference comes in handy. Notice FR 1.3.1, that is a Sub-Functional Requirement of the, "run setup on each server in the farm" or Parent Functional Requirement. Another thing I would like to point out is the Outline Settings feature. This feature allows you the ability to sort your outline view in a manner that best suits your project team
Why does that matter?
Within BambooRM there is yet one more feature that should be pointed out when discussing functional requirements, the print and download as word feature.
These two features allow you to download your list as a word document or as a PDF. This gives you the ability to generate on the spot reports to enable stakeholder, or management sign-off at any step of the requirements gathering project.
I'm sure you understand that once the report has been converted to word you would then have the ability to modify it to fit your organizations particular needs. You know things like the color scheme, add images, as well as add additional content that you fill would benefit your report would be done at that time.
Hopefully with this blog you now have good idea of how you can use the Functional Requirements in BambooRM to help your project team present a well stated, in few words, on scope, and fully traceable functional requirement piece for your organizations project.
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