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New Forrester Report on a Requirements “Revolution”

Forrester released a tremendous report recently entitled “High-Value Requirements Are Changing App Dev and Delivery”, by Tom Grant.  In this report Tom discusses the recent ‘quiet revolution’ that’s been happening with requirements definition and management, and the ripple effects this is having in the rest of the software development lifecycle.

The report makes the point that we’re living through a requirements revolution where inputs are more broad (now encompassing social media), and we’re more deeply delving into the underlying business problem more deeply and how users will leverage the application.  Requirements are being expressed in new, rich, innovative ways, and that all this is having ripple effects in the rest of the lifecycle.

“Great requirements are force multipliers, not unpleasant necessities”

Some net effects of this revolution is that new, innovative tools have emerged in response to this shift, the bar is raising for business analysts and product managers skill sets and experience in this era of increased emphasis on demand and value, and the once separate disciplines of requirements definition and requirements management have essentially melded into one.

“Teams that want to take advantage of these changes must go beyond the sincere desire to understand the customer more deeply to an understanding of how fundamentally requirements writing has changed and appreciate the resulting changes in related software development processes.”

Copies are available from Forrester.

Categorizing Your Requirements Changes

On typical software projects there are many changes that occur to requirements.   These changes are not all equal and knowing how to deal with the different kinds of changes is a key requirements management practice, and can make a huge difference in the overall performance of the project.  But what are the different kinds of changes?   How should requirements changes be categorized? 

Some categorize based on the nature of the change – whether it is a new requirement, a requirement modification, or a requirement removal.  Some categorize according to the impact and effort it would take to implement the change.  Others categorize based on the reason for the change such as due to market pressures, product strategy or vision, hardware/software environment, , or testability.  Some categorize based on domain of the change such as ‘Screen change’, ‘Report change’, or ‘Data Change’ for example.  Others categorize based on degrees of volatility, or how often the requirement changes.  There are many more categorization schemes and of course combinations of these too.

In a recent paper researchers studied how requirements changes are categorized by software practitioners and found that most change requests had little information about the reason for the change, and not enough information to effectively analyze its importance.  These researchers then proceeded to use the Card Sorting Method to study how different practitioners categorized their requirements on a globally distributed software project.   Perhaps not surprisingly the team members had different categorization schemes, each biased by their own concerns (e.g. the architect categorized according to effort required, the project manager by schedule impact, and so on).  Overall the study the participants found that focusing on a requirements categorization approach helped:

• Control and manage the requirements changes
• Assess the impact of requirements changes in a reliable way
• Promote a common understanding of what the change actually meant
• Identify risks associated with the individual change, and with the group of changes

You can read about there study here in along with several references to more on categorizing requirements changes.

Blueprint Wins Jolt Productivity Award

We are proud to announce that Blueprint Requirements Center 2010 has won a Jolt Productivity Award in the highly competitive category of "Design, Architecture, and Planning Tools".  This is the second time Blueprint has won a Jolt Award, the first being for Requirements Center 2009.  To quote from the judges "With no shortage of features, a simple interface, and a great attention to detail, Requirements Center has earned its place as a must-have tool, which will bring greater productivity and quality to projects of all sizes" .    Read it all here.

IT Business Analysts - Best Jobs in America

Money Magazine has ranked the role of IT Business Analysis is ranked as one of the best jobs in America for fast growth, number 11 on the list in fact, saying that “demand for these skills has skyrocketed”.  In the previous year, 2010, the role ranked 26th in the list.  Check out the Money Magazine entry for IT Business Analyst.

As a vendor of business analysis solutions we visit hundreds of companies a year in a wide cross-section of industries.  Seeing on a daily basis how pivotal the role is and the impact it has on business, we can certainly see first hand how those positioning themselves for a career in business analysis were making a smart move.