Chapter 5 Trawling For Requirements

Determining What the Product Should Be without understanding the work that it is to become a part of Many projects start with a fixed idea of what the product should be without understanding the work that it is to become a part of. establish how much of it will be done by the product. Once you understand the complete business use case, you establish how much of it will be done by the product. Trawling For Requirements are Trawling For Requirements are things you can do to find the optimal product. 2 7/17/2016

Trawling For Requirements Trawling is instigated by the requirements analyst. But the analyst does not work alone: Users and other stakeholders collaborate to gather the requirements. 3 7/17/2016

Trawling and Business Use Cases Business use cases are so fundamental one business use case at a time. Business use cases are so fundamental to the requirements activity that we urge you, whatever your situation or project type, to consider doing your requirements trawling one business use case at a time. 4 7/17/2016

5 Trawling Responsibilities Requirements Analyst Requirements Analyst  Observe & learn the work & understand the point of view of the user  understand the work  Invent better ways to do the work  Record the results in the form of a requirements specification Users, Customers, Client & Stakeholders Users, Customers, Client & Stakeholders  Source of knowledge about the work  They know what the work is and a vision of how it should be

6 7/17/2016 Trawling Goals Learn the objectives of the adjacent systems involved in the business event. Determine the best response that the organization can make to the business event. Determine the way that the product will contribute to the desired response. Determine & describe the requirements for the product.

7 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques Develop models to represent this work Develop models to represent this work such as:  Context Diagrams  First-level Breakdown Diagrams  Data Flow Diagrams  State Transition Diagrams or Matrix

8 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques … Interview the Users Interview the Users  Set the interview in context.  Ask a ?, listen to the answer, then feedback your understanding.  Draw models and encourage the user to change them.  Use user’s terminology & artifacts, conceptual & real.

9 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques… Business Event Workshops Business Event Workshops Deliverables :  Purpose of the business event – the desired outcomes for the business (in terms of outcomes)  Scenarios of work done to respond to the business event  “What if” scenarios about the things that can go wrong when the event happens  The part of the work to be done by the product  The likely users of any product built for the business event

10 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques Brainstorming Brainstorming Rules:  Participants should represent wide range of disciplines & experiences.  Do not judge, evaluate or criticize, simply record as ideas are generated  Produce lots of ideas.  Try to produce ideas that are unconventional, unique, crazy, wild, or creative  Write every idea down without editing.  Finally have requirements analyst evaluate and categorize ideas

Personas a virtual character Personas are useful when real users are not available. The persona is a virtual character that substitutes for the human users. 11 7/17/2016

12 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques… Electronic Requirements Electronic Requirements  to discuss requirements with group or discussion board.  Search web for references to your domains of interest.  Narrow the search by including the names of your business events & use cases.  Design requirements survey & send to potential users.  Leave requirements survey on web site and ask visitors to participate.  Offer a benefit for taking the survey including sharing the results.

Wikis, Blogs, and Discussion Forums In this technique, you seed the wiki with an outline of the proposed product and invite stakeholders to add their piece. Once someone posts an opinion on what the product should do, you will no doubt find others chipping in to support or refute the original posting. uncover a lot of information You will likely uncover a lot of information on what other people have done in your domain and convert it to requirements for your product. 13 7/17/2016

14 7/17/2016 Trawling Techniques… Videos Videos  In Workshops or brainstorming sessions  of work in current situation, on-site observations  of interviews  Users at work

Document Reviewing existing reports and files for underlying requirements. Document Reviewing is a technique of searching through existing reports and files for underlying requirements. It is best used when you have some existing or legacy system, and plan on modifying or renewing it. Meetings 15 7/17/2016

Innovative Products for ways to improve his client's work. This section deals with innovative requirements. We contend that the requirements analyst today must be looking for ways to improve his client's work. " "Our job is to give the client, on time and on cost, not what he wants, but what he never dreamed he wanted; and when he gets it, he recognizes it as something he wanted all the time." 16 7/17/2016

Choosing the Best Trawling Technique Which technique is the best choice in which set of circumstances? There is no simple answer to this question. The choice of technique is driven by the characteristics of the knowledge source (individual people). be able to use different techniques, and sometimes use techniques in combination. A competent requirements analyst needs to be able to use different techniques, and sometimes use techniques in combination. 17 7/17/2016