Requirements Gathering and Management
The first and most important phase of any project, and yet, the one that is the most over looked, short cutted, under funded, hurried and haphazardly done, is the requirements gathering! Would anyone attempt to build a simple house without a good set of blueprints? NO - Then why, everyday do we hear and read about the horror stories of software projects which have gone awry? Simple - poor requirements gathering and lack of process.
As with any serious developmental endeavor, be it the building of houses, automobiles, aircraft or even rocket ships, there takes place a predetermined set of processes and procedures which result in a set of plans and/or blueprints which specifically illustrates what the final product will look like, perform like and/or deliver.
Based upon these high level assumptions and their somewhat calculated benefits, company executives determine if the project is one which should be tagged for possible funding and/or to proceed into the next phase of development (e.g. business case analysis / return on investment - ROI).
Within the world of computer software (a.k.a. machine code) Business Requirements can be defined as; Establishing and maintaining an agreement with the customer on the requirements for the software project or product. This agreement is referred to as the system requirements allocated to the software. The Customer may be interpreted as Corporate, Marketing, Systems Engineering, and/or any other Internal (or) External client/customer. These requirements should cover both the technical and non-technical (e.g. delivery date/expectations and outcome).
The requirements should also form the basis for estimating, planning, performing, and tracking the project's activities throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). This also insures that which is ordered is exactly what is delivered. On time, within budget and with a high degree of quality! (Please refer to our Project Management section).
From Business Requirements there is an eventual refinement process which breaks down in further detail to Functional Requirements. This expands in detail on the exact usage scenario and specifies the inputs/outputs of the system and the processing between them. This then transpires into System Requirements which are considered a technical requirement that focuses on a computer hardware or software issue.
ObjectTel provides the most experienced Business Analysis tailored to your specific business and technical needs. Business Analysis must not only be very business savvy, but well qualified in leading Joint Application Requirements (JAR) and Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions as well.
Did you know?
- As much as a 200:1 cost savings results from finding errors in the Requirements stage verses finding errors in the maintenance stage of the software cycle, not to mention Requirements labor can be capitalized - Error corrections are considered pure expense!
- Poor requirements gathering and documentation results in over 30% of all software projects being canceled before completion
- Over 70% of the remainder fail to deliver expected features. The average project runs 189% over budget and overshoots its schedule by 222%
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