What is the common reason why projects fail? If you take up a moment to Google up reasons for project failure, the common reason that you'd find in most of the results is lack of clarity in requirements. Three out of five research findings have reasons related to requirements- * Unclear goals and objectives that change during the project * Incomplete requirements * Poor articulation of user requirements They all indicate the all-important step in ensuring success off project - collecting the right requirements. * Inputs for Collect RequirementsAt this stage of the project the documents already available are project charter and stakeholder register. And these two are the only inputs to this process.
Recall the contents of project charter. It contains, but not limited to, * short description of the project, * high level requirements * assigned project manager who is authorized to come up with budget, resource planning, decision on types of people based on skillet * milestones * ballpark budget figures * risks The high level requirements are available at this stage to start collecting detailed requirements.Next, you need to know whom to talk to and get detailed information about these high level requirements. And that information is available in Stakeholder register --This is a document that contains stakeholder information. * Tools and Techniques of Collect Requirements Interviews One on one Focus group Notice that there is only one odd color; he is the facilitator, while the blue ones are a group of employees (e.
G. Group of doctors, group of teachers, group of students, etc... ) Thus, focus group, focuses on one group to discuss different ideas from one group UT different perspective.
Facilitated Workshop Facilitated - Make easy Workshop - Present a performance of work, using intensive group discussion and improvisation in order to explore aspects of a certain thing. Benefits: * Focused sessions that bring key cross-functional stakeholders together to define product requirements. * Considered a primary technique for quickly defining cross-functional requirements and reconciling stakeholder differences. * Issues can De Alcoves Ana resolved more quickly tan In Uninominal echelons. I en picture low shows an example of facilitated workshop, where the 3 groups are sorted according to their expertise.
But then, there is only one master facilitator and that is the collector of the requirements. Group creativity techniques Some of the group creativity techniques that can be used are: * Brainstorm - a technique used to generate and collect multiple ideas related to project and product requirements. * Idea/Mind mapping - Ideas created through individual brain storming are consolidated (phantasmagorias) into a single map to reflect commonality ND differences in understanding, and generate new ideas. * Nominal group technique - is where a group of stakeholders are allowed to generate ideas silently.
Then listed ideas are discussed as a group, voted and prioritize. The top ideas are then considered for action. This is a facilitator driven group decision making technique. * The Delphi Technique A selected group of experts answer questionnaires and provides feedback regarding the responses from each round of requirement gathering. The responses are only available to the facilitator to maintain anonymity. Anonymity is important here to void bandwagon effort or halo effect, which may influence each other's feedback.
* Affinity diagram When you have a large bunch of ideas this method is used to categorize them. Write an idea each on a card (or postal) * Go through each, look at each of the cards and see if it looks related to another idea * Combine similar looking ideas together till all cards are used up Once completed, these categories can be used to create cause-and-effect diagrams. Group Decision Making Techniques These are used when many alternatives are available on a particular requirement ND you need to decide on one based on inputs from collective intelligence of stakeholders. These are also called collaborative decision making techniques.The main advantage of this method is - when individuals make decision they are influenced by their likings, risk taking appetite and abilities, whereas when a group takes decision it is more practical and not influenced by individuals characteristics. Unanimity .
.. Where everyone in the group decides on any one of the alternatives. * Majority .
.. Is when more than 50% of the participants will vote in favor of any one of the ideas. * Plurality ...
Is when the option with largest number of votes is selected, even if a majority (more than 50%) is not achieved. Dictatorship ... One of the participant stakeholders decides about which alternative to go No questions asked.
IT nana AT ten organization was to express strong view In favor of one of the alternatives, others in the group may not feel like going against it. Questionnaires and Surveys These are predefined set of questions targeted for a broader audience. This method is useful in scenarios where- * decision is required in quick time statistical analysis is sufficient to arrive at a conclusion Observations This is another very useful requirement collection mechanism.This is typically employed when the target stakeholders cannot communicate the requirements clearly, or the system is complex and needs to be studied while people are using it.
In this method you Just observe people working with the system and record requirements. Sometimes you could be a 'participant observer's understand the requirements by actually doing things. Prototyping This method is employed when requirements are not clearly envisioned by the customer and/or the system being created is unique and has not been tried before.A simple working model with basic functionality is created and shown to stakeholders to analyze and experiment. Based on their inputs it is further developed.
This process of iterative development is stopped when the requirements are understood in sufficient details; a way is figured out to test the system once it is developed. Once prototyping reaches its conclusion, team would move to the design phase. Prototyping uses 'progressive elaboration' way to unearth unknowns in the envisioned system.
