Business Analysts and IT Business Requirements Collaboration
Business requirements gathering and writing works best when the business analyst doesn’t throw the requirements over the cubicle wall to IT! Using collaborative requirements gathering sessions for scoping, high level requirements and detailed requirements should be conducted. If you involve the technical team in the detailed requirements sessions, you will have less churn and less chaos. Below is a description of the focus group sessions the Business Analyst can conduct:
- The first step would be to review the requirements use cases from the requirements sessions previously conducted.
- Once you have reviewed the high level requirements, you are ready to identify how the system will work with the SMEs, and Technical Leads. Using the requirements use cases, develop the detailed steps of the flows on the use cases. Using a ping-pong method, identify what the user will do and what the system response should be and document. The Business Analyst can use an Activity Diagram with swimlanes technique to help identify the detailed steps in the use case.
- While you are identifying the detailed steps, you can also note where you have screens and reference them on the use case. The Business Analyst should lead the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and the Technical Team in a brainstorming session using the storyboarding technique to collaboratively build screen mock-ups.
- The Business Analyst should then further define the screen specifications by capturing the details of the data fields on the screens with the team.
A good article that supports the importance of collaborative detailed requirements sessions as described above is as follows: http://advice.cio.com/jim_vaughan/10442/project_managers_need_to_engage_it_at_the_right_time
About Joy Matthews
Joy E. Matthews is the cofounder and Vice President of Training and Consulting Services for Pierson Requirements Group, Inc., (www.piersonrequirementsgroup.com), founded in 1990. She is an Information Systems Specialist with expertise in implementing Iterative Development and Joint Application Development using many development tools. She is accomplished in business modeling and facilitation techniques. She has participated in all phases of Information Engineering systems development and Total Quality Management projects. She has successfully completed Business Process Re-engineering, Information Strategy Planning, Business Area Analysis, Functional Area Analysis and Business System Design projects for a number of organizations and is a certified facilitator.
Joy trains the latest in UML and the use case methodology using JAD. She is an expert in JAD and UML best practices and industry standards. She is the co-author of Pierson’s repeatable development Methodology for Multi-Tier Architecture projects using Object-Oriented methods and JAD. Joy is the author of the JAD Facilitation and Requirements Gathering Seminar: A Process for Implementing Object-Oriented Projects. She is accomplished in Object-Oriented Requirements Analysis, Analysis and Detailed Design. She has facilitated and managed projects for all phases of the system development life cycle.
Joy is the author of the following seminars: Requirements Gathering & Writing Seminar using Data Techniques, JAD, UML and Use Cases, Business Analysis Seminar, Requirements Gathering & Writing Seminar using JAD, Use Cases and UML, User Acceptance Testing Seminar, Requirements & Specifications Seminar, Facilitated Session Leader Seminar, Learning Use Cases and UML Seminar and Writing Requirements That Work Seminar. Joy can be reached at jmatthews@piersonrequirementsgroup.com
