Right Requirements, Right Now: A Group Atlantic Presentation for PMI Calumet by Scott Stribrny Strategies for Project Success December 13, 2015 This document provides an outline of a presentation and is incomplete without the accompanying oral commentary and discussion. Can You Afford to Ignore These Numbers? More than 2X as many high performing organizations vs. low performers report strong BA/PM collaboration When projects do not meet their original goals and business objectives, inaccurate business analysis/requirements management is cited as the primary cause 47% of the time. In 41% of organizations, both project managers and business analysts perform business analysis AND requirements management for projects and programs 2 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Root of the Problem = Poor Requirements The quality of software requirements is a limiting factor on the success of software development projects. And it's the rare IT organization that couldn't improve its requirements practices. 3 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Real Opportunities for Improvement Defining Requirements Changing Requirements 4 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Illusion That Problem Has Been Solved …if anything, an overemphasis on requirements management can lend the illusion that requirements management problem has been solved . 5 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Build the Right Product All the software development techniques and tools and whatever level of maturity you have achieved will be of no use to you if you are not building the right product. 6 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Beyond Compliance—Build Capability Common Vocabulary - Principles - Process - Methods - Tools Measured Benefits Capture Clear Roles & Responsibilities 7 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Principle 1: Never Lose Sight of Your Goal 8 Understand Enough Of The Problem To Proceed With Minimal Risk Of Building The Wrong System Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Principle 2: Never Think You Can Understand the Problem Better Than Your Customers 9 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Principle 3: Never assume that one stakeholder can speak for all stakeholders. Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Principle 4: Prepare for Change CHA NGE 11 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Principle 5: Prepare for active, explicit, & overt triage. 12 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Process: Gathering, Trawling, or Eliciting? 13 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Elicitation: Choose Methods Wisely High customer visitation with users customer visitation phone call to with management user Contextual Inquiry visit to homemaker process participation open-ended inquiry Intervention With User gathering evidence of user behavior human performance lab participant observation Low Far Distance From User Environment Close 14 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Use 1st Things 1st Thinking Value Desired Workflow Action Action Functional Requirement Action Functional Functional Functional Requirement Requirement Requirement Functional Functional Requirement Requirement Value Delivered 15 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Use Operational Definitions What it has to do. How well it has to do it. Under what conditions it has to do it. 16 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Discover the Personality Of the Functionality Usability Look & Workflow Feel Political Action Performance Functional Functional Requirement Requirement Requirement Security Functional Requirement Requirement Legal Maintainability Operational 17 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Use Satisfaction to Prioritize High R9 R5 R8 R1 R3 Satisfaction Satisfaction R6 R12 R4 R11 R7 R10 R2 Low 18 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Add a Revealing Dimension High R9 R5 R8 R3 R1 Satisfaction Satisfaction R6 R4 R11 R12 R2 R7 R10 Low High Low Dissatisfaction Dissatisfaction 19 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Reveal Options to Cut Cost Non-compound High R9a R5 R8 R3 R1 Satisfaction R6 R12 R9b R4 R11 R2 R7 R10 Low High Low Dissatisfaction 20 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Are We Stable? Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Maybe Not Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. When Is a Requirement Ready to Pass Through the Gate? Unambiguous Not Compound Correct Look for Quality Characteristics Complete Consistent Traceable 23 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Ambiguity—Memorization Heuristic Meaningful information is easier to recall than meaningless information 1. Present requirement - Briefly - Various individuals 2. Recall the requirement precisely from memory 3. Parts not remembered are a rich source of ambiguity 24 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Apply the Memorization Heuristic The product shall provide status messages at regular intervals not less than every 60 seconds. 25 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Ambiguity—Mary Had A Little Lamb Spoken emphasis changes meaning 1. Read the requirement aloud several times. 2. Each time emphasizing a different word or words 3. Until as many interpretations as possible are discovered. 26 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Ambiguity—Polling (Nominal Group Technique) 1. Create a metric (Performance, Time to Complete, or Cost) 2. Ask informed individuals to independently estimate value of metric for requirement # of Respondents 3. Compare and discuss the tabulated results Low 1 2 3 4 5 High Ambiguity 27 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Peer Review (Inspection): The Project Manager’s Best Friend 1. Performed By Knowledgeable Peers 10:1 2. Of An Explicit, Completed Artifact 3. In Which The Author Participates 4. Whose Purpose Is To Find Defects Before They Contaminate Later Activities 5. Conducted According To Some Plan 6. Supported By Infrastructure IBM HP JPL 7. Carried Out By At Least 3 People, One Of Whom Is Responsible For Effectiveness Of Examination 8. That Produces Data Used For: Project Management Quality Control Process Improvement Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. 28 Why Inspections for Requirements? • Get quick and clear business advantage by implementing an early defect detection and containment (one of sixteen Critical Software Practices identified by the Software Program Manager’s Network). • Achieve strong demonstrated ROI within weeks of starting an inspection training/rollout program. • Software inspection is a proven high-leverage industry practice that is widely reported to improve productivity, reduce cycle time, and save money. 29 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Group Atlantic Client Results with Inspections • CCC Information Services—“In simple terms, we’ve seen a 20-to-1 return on investment in terms of the resources spent in detecting major defects vs. what it would have cost to detect and fix them through more traditional methods. This has worked out to about $70 per major defect! Results like this convinced me. Even if our sample data was off by 100%, we would still be looking at a 10-to-1return on investment.” ~Excerpt from client’s internal Quarterly Newsletter. • Zurich North America—”Applying Inspection to requirements work products an ROI of 9:1 was measured over first eight months.” 30 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. How Will You— Build Your Requirements Capability? Common Vocabulary TRAINING COACHING Principles Process Methods Tools PILOTS Measured Benefits Capture Clear Roles & Responsibilities 31 Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Try Our “Right Requirements, Right Now” Workshop! ! Accelerate requirements discovery ! Raise satisfaction with projects ! Reduce cost of rework ! Practice using checklists, heuristics, templates Copyright © 2015 Group Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. scott.stribrny@groupatlantic.com