Requirements Prioritization Strategies | 5
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The identified "gripes" (or pain points) are ranked using multivoting, where each stakeholder is given
some number of votes that can be distributed to the pain points that they consider most important to
them. This will identify the most significant pain points for an existing system or process.
Later, each identified user or functional requirement must be able to help resolve a "pain point," and
the rank of the pain point determines the priority of the requirement. So, a requirement that "scratches
a really bad itch" is then included in the scope. If it can't resolve a pain point, the requirement is out of
scope or has very low priority.
Strategy: Limited Votes
Limited votes is a scheduling strategy that forces reluctant stakeholders to make decisions. Each
stakeholder gets a limited number of votes that can be assigned to any of the identified requirements.
Multiple votes per requirement are allowed (multivoting). The key is to provide each stakeholder
with fewer votes than there are requirements. This forces the stakeholders to make decisions. If some
requirement is truly crucial to them, then they can give it more than one vote; of course, that will take a
vote away from some other requirement that they'd perhaps like included.
Strategy: Limited Weighted Votes
This strategy is the same as limited votes except that the votes of "important stakeholders" have an
increased weight, or some stakeholders may get additional votes. This addresses the political need to
appease senior-level stakeholders, such as a CIO.
Strategy: Time-Boxing
This approach is particularly suited to iterative development. The development of a system is divided
into relatively short time periods that are of a fixed duration, often two to four weeks. Prior to each
iteration, force stakeholders to choose a small set of requirements that will be addressed in the
upcoming iteration. Stakeholders naturally tend to pick the most important requirements. There is no
need to fully prioritize the requirements catalog. As new requirements are added to the project, this
technique seamlessly absorbs them, as prioritization is only done at the beginning of each iteration.
Summary
Ranking of requirements is a critical business analysis activity that serves two important purposes:
identifying requirements that must be included in the project scope and determining the urgency of
implementation of requirements. The business analyst must know a variety of techniques to produce
effective prioritization.
About the Author:
Dr. Martin Schedlbauer, consultant and instructor for the Corporate Education Group, is an accomplished business analysis
subject matter expert and has been leading and authoring seminars and workshops in business analysis, software engineering,
and project management for over 20 years. Beyond that, he is involved in architecting large-scale distributed software systems
for many of his clients.
