Collect Requirement

The process of defining and documenting stakeholders needs to meet the project objectives. Requirements include the quantified and documented needs and expectation of the sponsor, customer and other stakeholders. Requirements between the WBS, cost, schedule and quality planning are built upon these requirements.

Organization categorize requirements into project requirements and product requirements. Project requirements can include business requirements, project management requirements and delivery requirements etc. Product requirements can include information on technical requirements, security requirements and performance requirements etc.

Inputs:

Project Charter:

The project charter is used to provide the high level project requirements and high level product description of the project so that detailed product requirements can be developed.

Stakeholder Register:

The stakeholder register is used to identify stakeholder that can provide information on detailed project and product requirements.

Tools and Techniques:

Interviews:

An interview is a formal or informal approach to discover information from the stakeholders. Interview often conducted one-on-one but may involved multiple interviewers or multiple interviewees. In interview stakeholders and subject matter experts can identifying and defining the features and functions of project.

Focus Groups:

Focus groups bring together prequalified stockholders and subject matter expert to learn about their expectations and attitudes about a proposed product or service or result. A trained moderator guides the group through an interactive discussion.

Facilitated Workshops:

Workshops are considered a primary technique for quickly defining cross-functional requirements. In workshops issues can be discovered and resolved more quickly than an individual sessions.

Facilitated workshops called Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions are used in software development industry. These facilitated sessions focus on bringing users and the development team together to improve the software development process.

Groups Creativity Techniques:

Groups techniques can be organized to organize project and product requirements. Some of the groups creativity techniques are:

Brainstorming:

A technique used to collect and generate multiple ideas related to project and product requirement.s

Nominal Groups Techniques:

This technique enhances the brainstorming with a process used to rank the most useful ideas for further brainstorming or for prioritization.

The Delphi Technique:

A selected group of experts answers questionnaires and provides feedback regarding the responses from each round of requirements gathering.

Idea/Mind Mapping:

Ideas created through individual brainstorming are consolidated into a single map to reflect commonality and differences in understanding and generate new ideas.

Affinity Diagram:

This technique allows large number of ideas to be sorted into groups for reviews and analysis.

Groups Decision Making Techniques:

Groups decision making is an assessment process of multiple alternatives with an expected outcome in the form of future actions resolutions. These techniques can be used to generate, classify and prioritize product requirements.

There are multiple methods of reaching a group decision:

Unanimity:

Everyone agrees on a single course of action.

Majority:

Support from more than 50% of the members of the group.

Plurality:

The largest block in a group decides even if a majority is not achieved.

Dictatorship:

One individual makes the group for decision.

Questionnaires and Surveys:

Questionnaires and surveys are written sets of questions designed to quickly accumulate information from a wide number of respondents. Questionnaires and surveys are most appropriate with broad audiences, when quick turnaround is needed and when statistical analysis is appropriate.

Observations:

Observations provide a direct way of viewing individuals. Observations are also called “job shadowing” is usually done externally by the observer viewing the user performing his or her job.

Prototypes:

Prototyping is a method of obtaining early feedback on requirements by providing a working model of the expected product. Prototypes allows stakeholders to experiment with a model of their final product. Prototypes support the concepts of progressive elaboration because they are used in iterative cycles.

Outputs:

Requirements Documentation:

Requirements documentation describes how individual requirements meet the business need for the project. Requirements may start out at a high level and become more detailed. The format of a requirement document may range from a simple document listing all the requirements categorized by stakeholder and priority to more elaborate forms containing executive summary, detailed description and attachments.

Components of requirement documentation are:

•      Business need or opportunity to be sized
•      Business and project object for tracebility
•      Functional requirements
•      Non-functional requirements
•      Quality requirement
•      Acceptance criteria
•      Business rules
•      Impacts to other organizational areas
•      Impacts to other entities inside or outside the performing organization
•      Support and training requirements
•     Requirements assumptions and constraints 

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