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
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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
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Real Opportunities for Improvement
Defining
Requirements
Changing
Requirements
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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
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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
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Beyond Compliance—Build Capability
Common Vocabulary
- Principles
- Process
- Methods
- Tools
Measured
Benefits
Capture
Clear Roles & Responsibilities
7
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Principle 1: Never Lose Sight of Your Goal
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Understand Enough Of The
Problem To Proceed With
Minimal Risk Of Building The
Wrong System
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Principle 2: Never Think You Can Understand the
Problem Better Than Your Customers
9
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Principle 3: Never assume that one
stakeholder can speak for all stakeholders.
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Principle 4: Prepare for Change
CHA
NGE
11
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Principle 5: Prepare for
active, explicit, & overt triage.
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Process: Gathering, Trawling, or Eliciting?
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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
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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
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Use Operational Definitions
What it has to do.
How well it has to do it.
Under what conditions
it has to do it.
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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
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Use Satisfaction to Prioritize
High
R9
R5
R8
R1 R3
Satisfaction
Satisfaction
R6
R12
R4
R11
R7
R10
R2
Low
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Add a Revealing Dimension
High
R9
R5
R8
R3
R1
Satisfaction
Satisfaction
R6
R4
R11
R12
R2
R7
R10
Low
High
Low
Dissatisfaction
Dissatisfaction
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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
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Are We Stable?
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Maybe Not
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When Is a Requirement Ready
to Pass Through the Gate?
Unambiguous
Not Compound
Correct
Look for Quality
Characteristics
Complete
Consistent
Traceable
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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
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Apply the Memorization Heuristic
The product shall
provide status
messages at regular
intervals not less than
every 60 seconds.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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How Will You—
Build Your Requirements Capability?
Common Vocabulary
TRAINING
COACHING
Principles
Process
Methods
Tools
PILOTS
Measured
Benefits
Capture
Clear Roles & Responsibilities
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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