Why the Need for Business Requirements Anyway?

Published 03/04 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community

It's simple, business requirements gathering is an essential part of successful project management and application development. Organizations as a whole have started to recognize this, and have recently started to push the importance of requirements gathering. But here at Bamboo, we feel that there really hasn't been enough done to explain the actual need for a requirements gathering process. It's also our belief that when project / development teams don't follow a successful business requirements gathering process they oftentimes end up playing the "blame game". Come on, as a developer or project manager, you know this game. It's the game where technical and development teams actually put the blame on their customers or clients, rather than on themselves, for not being able to reach deliverable deadlines or, even worse, delivering an application that falls short of expectations.

Why are requirements so important for application development and project management?

Let's take a look at an example of what I'm talking about. A customer asks for an application that streams the current temperature and time for 5 specific cities. Your project / development team delivers an application that lists 10 cities with historical events that happened on today's date. Is everyone ready for the blame game? "Well, we think it's an awesome app and honestly, you never really gave us any 'absolutely clear' business requirements. Based on what we thought you wanted we built you this!"

As you see in the simple example, by not defining the correct business data and system requirements at the start of the development project, the team delivered a totally different application than what was requested. By managing projects this way you run the risk of significant overrun costs for your SDLC phases. This is because the actual analysis process gets shifted into other phases of the SDLC, resulting in doubling your work effort. It boils down to this: items that should have been addressed during initial analysis are actually discovered during design, coding, scheduled maintenance, or even as late as an enhancement phase. With the necessity of added changes, you are inevitably faced with a ripple effect that highlights the need for increased effort; it therefore becomes harder to meet proposed deliverables which ultimately results in an increased overall cost of your project. All of this is attributed to a need to make changes or add additional requirements.

Are you starting to see the point here? If you're missing or have incomplete requirements documentation, you're setting yourself up for project overruns, and nobody wants that. Let's face it; it's not uncommon for project overruns to deplete significant amounts of a department's total budget, sometimes as high as 70%, and in some cases, even more.

As much as I hate to say this, I'm guilty of playing this blame game too. Not anymore though, with BambooRM's built in requirements tools, your project team is given the ability to guide your users through a process to draw out the exact core business requirements needed to deliver an accurate application development. You also have the added bonus of your project's data residing in one central location that is accessible by all designated team members all the time.

Then what defines a good business requirement?

I'm sure by now you're saying..."Okay, what do you suggest for determining good business requirements?" I'm well past suggestions at this point, I'm all about facts! The fact of the matter is, for successful project management, business requirement specifications need to be accurate, complete and clear. I found a good example of a checklist that I feel represents the points I'm trying to get across; the checklist which follows was adapted from that article by Anne Marie Smith, published in The Data Administration Newsletter 10 years ago. Which goes to show, if something is done accurately and stated correctly, it will stand the test of time. I really feel that if you use this checklist in conjunction with BambooRM, you will ensure your business requirements are of a high quality and specific to your project's end goal.

Precise:

Are your requirements stated consistently and without contradicting themselves or related systems?
Do the requirements support the stated business, system and project objectives?
Determine if any of your requirements are in conflict with given stated assumptions or limitations (cost, schedule, business environment, tech environment, or resources)
Are all activities and operations necessary?
Are any requirements you identified not required or out of scope?
Are there any data requirements that are not necessary or out of scope?

Defined:

Are all requirements free of implementation specifics (requirements state what, not how)?
Are they accurately stated in a few words (shall, will, should)?
Is your writing style and terminology consistent with your technical team and business client (is there a need for a project glossary)?
Have all operations been stated in terms of their triggering events or conditions, information requirements, processing and outcomes?
Is there any doubt in any of the operations, rules, definitions, or statements?
Confirm all your assumptions have been clearly stated

Complete:

Are the goals and objectives of the system clearly and fully defined?
Are all requirements traceable to higher level requirements or project mission statement (goals, objectives, constraints or concept of operation)?
Have all events and conditions been handled?
Have all operations been specified and are they sufficient to meet the stated system objectives?
Have all objects and data in the Activity Specification been defined in the model?
Have all required definitions and rules for objects and data been defined?
Does the specification satisfy the level of detail required by the design team?
Have all undefined, unresolved, incomplete specifications been identified for resolution?

Object specifications: Determining factors-

If your objects have been identified
If objects in the Activity Specification have been specified
That data items have been accurately attributed to the correct objects (Normalization)
That you identified data elements or at least created and understand them
That data in the Activity Specification has been specified
If data elements have been recognized
That all necessary relationships have been defined
That data items and relationships have been correctly and precisely defined
If redundant or derived data items and relationships can be identified and subsequently eliminated

Activity specifications: Determining Factors-

If all required activities have been specified
If all operations have been correctly and precisely defined
If all outcomes of each operation have been specified
If all standard/best practice/or identified life-cycle operations for each object have been specified
That all operations identify the event(s) or conditions which trigger them
That all operations identify the operator both system or user
That all operations use strong, clear-cut action verbs
That all specifications are clear cut and precise
That the data being used in the operation is clearly understood
If required operations use rules, formulas or conditions to qualify or define the processing of the operation
If all operations identify or clearly entail an outcome
If a data flow diagram has been created and updated
That your interfaces and activities have been updated in your data flow diagram

Organizational Compliancy:

Do your deliverables conform to organizational standards, as well as do they meet organizational process objectives, and follow industry standards?

Again, in using the above checklist in conjunction with BambooRM SaaS application, you gain the ability to work within your requirements management gathering methodology, providing you the ability to develop robust, sustainable, and useable systems and applications. This in turn gives your organization that much needed competitive edge. This is achieved by collecting, segregating, prioritizing, and documenting all relevant information and process needs in one central location... BambooRM. As always, sign up for a free trial and let us know what you think, or if you have any questions regarding all things BambooRM!

Sharepoint Answers

Why the Need for Business Requirements Anyway?

Precise:

Defined:

Complete:

Object specifications: Determining factors-

Activity specifications: Determining Factors-

Organizational Compliancy:

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Sharepoint Answers

Why the Need for Business Requirements Anyway?

Share This Article

Precise:

Defined:

Complete:

Object specifications: Determining factors-

Activity specifications: Determining Factors-

Organizational Compliancy:

Recent SharePoint Questions

More Articles By

Develop Mobile Applications for SharePoint with Mobile Entree - CMSWire

Bamboos Year in Review: Marc OBrien Introduces the Bamboo Online Applications Division

Working with the Admin Links on your SharePoint Blog

More Articles Under "News from Around the Web"

Guest Blog by H3 Solutions Jason Hall - Mobile Entrée, Taking a Look Under the Hood

SharePoint on Your SmartPhone, Android Moves to Laptops, Best Practices Conference Speakers List

Announcing the Best Practices Conference Speakers List!

Most Viewed Content