Chapter 5 Trawling For Requirements Determining What the

Chapter 5 Trawling For Requirements

Determining What the Product Should Be n 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. of n Once you understand the complete business use case, you establish how much of it will be done by the product. n Trawling For Requirements are things you can do to find the optimal product. 9/21/2021 2

Trawling For Requirements n Trawling is instigated by the requirements analyst. But the analyst does not work alone: Users and other stakeholders collaborate to gather the requirements. 9/21/2021 3

Trawling and Business Use Cases n 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. 9/21/2021 4

Trawling Responsibilities n Requirements Analyst ¨ Observe & learn the work & understand the point of view of the user n ¨ understand the work ¨ Invent better ways to do the work ¨ Record the results in the form of a requirements specification Users, Customers, Client & Stakeholders ¨ Source of knowledge about the work ¨ They know what the work is and a vision of how it should be 9/21/2021 5

Trawling Goals n Learn the objectives of the adjacent systems involved in the business event. n Determine the best response that the organization can make to the business event. n Determine the way that the product will contribute to the desired response. n Determine & describe the requirements for the product. 9/21/2021 6

Trawling Techniques n Develop models to represent this work such as: Context Diagrams ¨ First-level Breakdown Diagrams ¨ Data Flow Diagrams ¨ State Transition Diagrams or Matrix ¨ 9/21/2021 7

Trawling Techniques … n 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. 9/21/2021 8

Trawling Techniques… n Business Event Workshops n 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 9/21/2021 9

Trawling Techniques n Brainstorming n 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 9/21/2021 have requirements analyst evaluate and categorize ideas 10

Personas n Personas are useful when real users are not available. The persona is a virtual character that substitutes for the human users. 9/21/2021 11

Trawling Techniques… n Electronic Requirements ¨ Email 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. 9/21/2021 12

Wikis, Blogs, and Discussion Forums n 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. n 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. 9/21/2021 13

Trawling Techniques… n Videos ¨ In Workshops or brainstorming sessions ¨ of work in current situation, on-site observations ¨ of interviews ¨ Users at work 9/21/2021 14

Document Reviewing n Document Reviewing is a technique of searching through existing reports and files for underlying requirements. n It is best used when you have some existing or legacy system, and plan on modifying or renewing it. Meetings 9/21/2021 15

Innovative Products n 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. " 9/21/2021 16

Choosing the Best Trawling Technique n Which technique is the best choice in which set of circumstances? There is no simple answer to this question. n The choice of technique is driven by the characteristics of the knowledge source (individual people). n A competent requirements analyst needs to be able to use different techniques, and sometimes use techniques in combination. 9/21/2021 17