How to Get Stakeholders to Read Your Requirements Specifications | 3
300 Brickstone Square • Suite 201 • Andover, MA 01810 USA • 1.800.288.7246 • +1.978.649.8200 • info@corpedgroup.com
which requirements they should be able to
provide you with as their part of the requirements,
and then confirm this with those stakeholders.
This helps you to be sure that you will be getting
requirements from the right people, and it
helps to confirm their interest and willingness to
participate.
Conduct Business Analysis and Documentation
"On the Fly"
Do your homework: read the documentation,
learn the words, and review the processes before
you meet with your stakeholders. Learning
about the domain on your own is usually much
more efficient than asking a roomful of people
in project meetings to explain it to you — more
efficient for you and for them. Next, choose an
elicitation technique that is appropriate to the
kind of requirements you are trying to get and
that will work with that particular group of project
stakeholders. Interviewing shouldn't be the only
technique in your repertoire.
Now here's a real project management time-
saver: when you conduct the requirements-
gathering session, plan to use electronic tools
such as a work-flow modeling tool or even just
a word processor to document and analyze the
requirements during the gathering session. Use
a formal model or template to help guide you as
to what details are needed and when. Share the
screen with the stakeholders as you are capturing
and documenting the requirements. This will help
them to understand your models and diagrams
and to understand the level of detail that you
need. More important, it gives both of you a
chance to confirm that what the stakeholders
thought you said is what they think you heard.
If there is a miscommunication, you will both
recognize it and be able to correct it right away.
Let the Project Stakeholders Dictate the Business
Analysis Requirements
This is the most crucial step in the requirements
process of your business analysis. As you
guide them through your various models and
documents, use the words of the stakeholders,
exactly as they say them. But coach them
along. When you are working through a use
case with stakeholders in project meetings,
let the stakeholders see your screen with your
use case template and other models. Ask the
stakeholders to dictate each step. They may need
a little coaching to get used to the formal way of
phrasing the sentences, but they tend to catch on
pretty quickly.
Write each step exactly as they say it, and let them
see what you wrote. As you work through the
use case, all of you will participate in correcting
assumptions, fleshing out details, identifying
variances, and so on. In short, for better results,
you will be doing the analysis together.
At the end of this requirements-gathering,
analysis, and documentation session, you will
have requirements documentation that accurately
reflects what the stakeholders told you, in a
structured format useful to other stakeholders
such as designers and testers. And these
requirements will have already been subjected
to a lot of analysis during your project meetings.
Share the electronic or paper copy of the
document right away, so that your stakeholders
can study it further. If changes are required, you
and your stakeholders are likely to identify them
sooner rather than later.
Remember to review, confirm, and obtain
approval from the appropriate stakeholders
before making any changes to these documents.
