mamisay sysreqs

Impertinence

Impartiality

Relax constraints

Attention to detail

Reframing

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination

Impertinence

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination: You should question everything

Impartiality

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination: Your role is to find the best solution to a business problem or opportunity.

Relax constraints

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination: Assume that anything is possible and eliminate the infeasible.

Attention to detail

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination: Every fact must fit with every other fact.

Reframing

Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination: You must consider how each user views his or her requirements.

From interviews and observations

From existing written documents

From computerized sources

Deliverables of Requirements Determination

Interview transcripts, observation notes, meeting minutes

Enumerate Deliverables of Requirements Determination: From interviews and observations

Business mission and strategy statements, sample business forms and reports and computer displays, procedure manuals, job descriptions, training manuals, flowcharts and documentation of existing systems, consultant reports

Enumerate Deliverables of Requirements Determination: From existing written documents

JAD session results, CASE repositories, system prototype displays, and reports

Enumerate Deliverables of Requirements Determination: From computerized sources

Interviewing and Listening

Interviewing groups

Directly observing users

Analyzing procedures and other document

Traditional Methods for Determining Requirements

Dialogue with users or managers to obtain their requirements.

Interviewing

Open-ended: conversational, questions with no specific answers in mind

Closed-ended: structured, questions with a limited range of possible answers

Two forms of interview

Plan the interview.

Listen carefully and take notes (record if permitted).

Review notes within 48 hours.

Be neutral.

Seek diverse views.

Guidelines for Effective Interviewing

Interview Guide

document for developing, planning and conducting an interview

Interviewing Groups

Interview several key people together

Nominal Group Technique

A facilitated process that supports idea generation by groups.

Direct Observation

Approaches of interview where:

Watching users do their jobs.

Can provide more accurate information than self-reporting (like questionnaires and interviews)

Document Analysis

Review of existing business documents.

Can give a historical and “formal” view of system requirements

Written work procedures

Business forms

Reports

Descriptions of current information system

Four types of useful documents

Written work procedures

document that

–Describes how a job is performed.

–Includes data and information used and created in the process of performing the job or task.

Business forms

document that Explicitly indicate data flow in or out of a system

Reports

it enables the analyst to work backward from the report to the data that generated it.

Formal

–The official way a system works is described in the organization’s documentation.

–Procedure documents describe the formal system

Informal

The way a system works in practice.

–Interviews and observation reveal an informal system

Joint Application Design (JAD)

–Brings together key users, managers, and systems analysts.

–Purpose: collect system requirements simultaneously from key people.

–Conducted off-site.

Group Support Systems

Facilitate sharing of ideas and voicing of opinions about system requirements.

CASE tools

Used to analyze existing systems.

Help discover requirements to meet changing business conditions.

System prototypes

Iterative development process.

The rudimentary working version of the system is built.

Refine understanding of system requirements in concrete terms

Prototyping

Quickly converts requirements to a working version of the system.

Once the user sees requirements converted to the system, he will ask for modifications or will generate additional requests.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Search for and implementation of radical change in business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements in products and services