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I Don’t Have Time to Manage Requirements; My Project is Late Already!

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on I Don’t Have Time to Manage Requirements; My Project is Late Already!

An Overview

For those of us who have been given imposed deadlines that often seem arbitrary and unreasonable, managing requirements is one of the last things we want to do on a project. We worry about getting the product built and tested as best as we can. And we feel fortunate to gather any requirements at all. However the lack of a well-managed requirements process can lead to common project issues, such as scope creep, cost overruns, and products that are not used. Yet many project professionals skim over this important part of the project and rush to design and build the end product.

This is the first in a series of articles providing an overview of requirements management. It emphasizes that the discipline of requirements management dovetails with that of project management, and discusses the relationship between the two disciplines. It describes the requirements framework and associated knowledge areas. In addition, it details the activities in requirements planning, describes components of a Requirements Management Plan, and explains how to negotiate for the use of requirements management tools, such as the Requirements Traceability Matrix to “get the project done on time.”

The Case Against Requirements Management

It is not uncommon to hear project professionals and team members rationalize about why requirements management is not necessary. We commonly hear these types of statements:

  • “I don’t have time to manage their requirements. I’m feeling enough pressure to get the project done by the deadline, which has already been dictated. My team needs to get going quickly if we have a hope of meeting the date.” 
  • “Our business customers don’t fully understand their requirements. We could spend months spinning our wheels without nailing them down. I doubt if all the details will emerge until after we implement!” 
  • “My clients are not available. I schedule meetings only to have them cancelled at the last minute. They don’t have time. They’re too busy on their own work to spend time in requirements meetings. And my clients, the good ones, are working on other projects, their day-to-day jobs, fighting fires, and their own issues.” 
  • “Managing requirements, when they’re just going to change, is a waste of time and resources. It creates a bureaucracy. It uses resources that could be more productive on other tasks, such as actually getting the project done!” 
  • “They don’t think we’re productive unless we’re building the end product. They don’t want to pay for us to spend a lot of time in requirements meetings or doing paperwork!”

For many requirements management equates to bureaucracy and “paperwork,” because the discipline has not yet stabilized and evolved. The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) in their body of knowledge, the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK), establishes a requirements framework for the discipline of requirements management.

This series of articles discusses requirements management, emphasizing the planning and the requirements management plan.

Requirements Management Overview

The Project Management Institute (PMI, 2004, p 111), the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA, 2006, p 9) and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, 1990, Standard 610) all define a requirement as a condition or capability needed to solve a problem or achieve an objective that must be met by a system or system component to satisfy a contract, standard, or specification.

Requirements management includes the planning, monitoring, analyzing, communicating, and managing of those requirements. The output from requirements management is a requirements management plan, which on large projects can be a formal set of documents with many subsidiary plans. Examples of subsidiary documents are a business analysis communication plan, metrics for measuring business analysis work, key deliverables and estimates for the business analysis work effort, and many more. On smaller efforts this requirements management plan can be an informal roadmap. In either case, it is subsidiary to the overall project management plan, created, executed, controlled, and updated by the project manager.

Below is an exhibit showing the relationship between the requirements management plan and example set of plans that are subsidiary to the integrated project management plan. As indicated, the requirements management plan is incorporated into the project management plan, and all the subsidiary requirements management plans are incorporated into the subsidiary plans, within the overall project management plan. We will have a deeper look at requirements planning later in this series.

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Exhibit 1: The Requirements Management Plan in Relation to Project Management

If care isn’t given to planning business analysis activities, the entire project could go awry. Lack of requirements management is one of the biggest reasons why 60% of project defects are due to requirements and almost half of the project budget is spent reworking requirements defects. (Software Engineering Institute (SEI’s) Square Project updated 5/12/05).

In the upcoming articles of the series, we’re going to focus on requirements planning. But, it is also important to understand the overall requirements management framework, which is based on the BABOK. The remaining parts of the series includes: Part II – BABOK Overview, III-Requirements Planning, IV-The “Right Amount” of Requirements Management.

Elizabeth Larson, CBAP, PMP and Richard Larson, CBAP, PMP are Principals, Watermark Learning, Inc. Watermark Learning helps improve project success with outstanding project management and business analysis training and mentoring. We foster results through our unique blend of industry best practices, a practical approach, and an engaging delivery. We convey retainable real-world skills, to motivate and enhance staff performance, adding up to enduring results. With our academic partner, Auburn University, Watermark Learning provides Masters Certificate Programs to help organizations be more productive, and assist individuals in their professional growth. Watermark is a PMI Global Registered Education Provider, and an IIBA Endorsed Education Provider. Our CBAP Certification Preparation class has helped several people already pass the CBAP exam. For more information, contact us at 800-646-9362, or visit us at http://www.watermarklearning.com/.

Documents; The Neglected Side of Business Information Automation

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles.

Many organizations today are looking inward to streamline their processes and increase efficiency. Traditionally, much of their emphasis has been focused on developing or acquiring high tech business automation solutions, while improvements regarding business processes and the documents that flow through them have been largely ignored.

People, processes, paper and technology must work together in an environment that promotes collaboration and accountability in order to maximize effectiveness and efficiency. Most organizations forget to include all relevant information involved in a business process while working in a digital environment.

Most of it is locked and hidden away in unstructured documents – email, diagrams, notes, spreadsheets and other amorphous silos of information. All are important pieces when preparing the foundation of a business decision and should be quickly accessible to everyone involved.

All too often, an electronic Document Management (eDM) solution is implemented and placed at the end of the process, performing only as an archival virtual filing cabinet. Following the Six Sigma methodology of DMAIC – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control – a business analyst can help their company place the eDM initiative at the front of the process, as paper and electronic documents are received, so that eDM technology may benefit and improve the entire business process for significantly greater value and return-on-investment.

Define and Measure: The Significance of Documents

Fundamentally, there are many types of documents considered as evidence of a business transaction. Although this information may be transcribed into an organization’s database, there are legal/compliance reasons that companies must protect, retrieve and produce these documents on a routine or on-exception basis.

Much of the manual daily business activities involve handling and preparing documents for processing, using database applications as well as when performing operational tasks. Unfortunately, companies today are unaware of the eDM systems potential and simply file paper or electronic images of these documents in ways that make accessing and working with them both cumbersome and time consuming.

Common Problems in Companies Today

  • “Is the document I need an email, fax, word-processor, spreadsheet, drawing, photo or paper and whose file is it in?”. After determining it is in Sarah’s possession – “Sarah is on vacation and I don’t have a key to her desk or her email/fax/computer password to find it now”. 
  • “I can’t find/read your fax, please resend it” A terrible thing to say to your customer. This is done every day in many companies, not just once, but more than once to the same customer for the same fax! 
  • When auditors request that all materials related to a particular account be collected, it can be a nightmare to try to bridge all the different paper, email, fax and disk filing silos to search. 
  • How does a company ensure privacy compliance when an email on the subject may have been electronically forwarded and replied to many different individuals/email boxes, creating and duplicating potentially sensitive data? How can you be sure the data is fully-removed or complies with retention policies? 
  • “I have worked here for five years and I’m proud to say I’ve never deleted an email.” Microsoft Exchange and similar email systems were designed to communicate messages — not to archive emails and attached documents forever.

It is important to note that traditional “paper-shuffling and frantic-file searches” also apply to electronic files such as email, faxes and digital documents.

Analyze and Improve: Addressing the Document Information Gap

We begin addressing the document information gap by identifying untraditional document types involved in a business decision, which are needed in the overall design of the enterprise’s document management system. The establishment of a common Document Repository eliminates information silos, allowing documents to be easily searched for and shared by order of relevance – regardless of their origin, paper, email, fax, office-tool generated, etc.

A well designed eDM solution establishes the foundation needed for an efficient electronic Workflow (eWorkflow) solution to help improve and streamline business processes. In order to maximize the potential of the eDM solution, the business analyst must take steps to document a clear understanding of the current processes and goals. Then it is possible to look objectively at the opportunities to formulate a clear vision for the improved and automated business processes.

Once this vision has gained consensus of management and staff, today’s eDM solutions make it possible to prototype eWorkflow solutions that model the integration of eDM systems with actual business processes. These solutions provide higher-level workflow specifications appropriate for both technical and non-technical business analysts.

  • Visual eWorkflow Modeling is easy for the business analyst to define and for the impacted staff to understand. The visual eWorkflow process models can then be prototyped and tested allowing the business analyst and staff to understand the process and see it in action. This interactive experience allows each process to be verified and further refined by rapid iteration until it is right. 
  • The business analyst is typically able to simplify processes, eliminate steps that add no business value and reduce the number of required processes by focusing on the mainstream processes. As a result, the eWorkflow designs are likely to have fewer exceptions 
  • However, since exceptions are a normal part of business, the eWorkflow solution provides standardized methods and tools for handling them such as: 
    • Auto-Reroute & Alert Mechanisms that are triggered by a business rule violation or time-limit timeout or specified condition that take a specified action, route to a pre-defined general exception process or generate an alert-message notice via email. 
    • When more than one document must be present before performing the next eWorkflow step processing, the order in which the documents arrive at the workflow step is not important, but once all required documents are present and available processing can continue at the next step. Should too much time elapse, and one or more required documents have not appeared, then an auto-reroute or alert mechanism is triggered to insure that the exception is properly handled.

Measure and Control: Automated Process Information Metrics

New real-time design and control mechanisms are being introduced in today’s advanced eDM/eWorkflow solutions: 

  • Business analysts are able to create Visual eWorkflow and staff can easily understand and use the improved business processes being defined. 
  • Users working under an eWorkflow solution:: 
    • Can easily see their assigned work for one or many different types of processes in their browser window. o Provide a heads-up display of key procedural steps to be followed when working on a particular document. 
    • Require no programming knowledge to define business rule routing logic, so that work can effectively be tracked and delivered to the right people each time. 
  • Operational supervisors can use the visual representations of eWorkflow to monitor in real-time, information regarding individual processing performance statistics, number of assigned resources, identify process bottlenecks and for each process/task view the number of work-items:
    • Completed 
    • In-Process 
    • Pending Processing
      documents1.png
  • Advanced functionality can help supervisors reassign resources allocated to a process on-the-fly: 
    • For a temporary period or permanently o Staff may continue to serve previously-assigneddocuments2.png processes as well as the new assignment 
    • Unlike traditional, workflow that routes to specified workstations or individuals, modern routing is done to defined processes where User-Roles or Resources can be assigned to specified processes where human intervention is needed. 
  • Extensive on-demand reports are defined and others may be created with high-level report generation tools by business analysts and/or knowledgeable operational staff.

Summary

Despite the widespread usage of database applications, business processes are typically poorly documented and have many processing exceptions, ad hoc and inconsistent procedures. To some extent, this is due to the fact that documents have been neglected in the overall design of information systems.

By taking advantage of the many new advances in eDM and eWorkflow technology as well as the steep declines in the cost of computers, storage and networking, it is practical to consider integrating documents and business applications into functionally-complete business process automation systems.

Many of today’s eDM solutions are web-enabled and allow documents to be efficiently captured, shared, processed, stored and displayed from virtually anywhere an Internet connection is available. Tight integration of eDM with business process, central access for all document stakeholders, and enhanced real-time business process controls are just a few of the gains that can be realized when document automation is incorporated into the overall design of business systems.

Note: The iDatix iSynergy electronic Document Management (eDM) and Progression electronic Workflow (eWorkflow) solutions have been successfully used by Point North Consulting to address these issues and provide the described functionality presented in this paper.

Mark Crandall is a Senior Director and the President of Point North Consulting in Orlando, FL. He has more than fifteen years experience with business process improvement and information management. Mr. Crandall has a proven track record gathering and analyzing requirements, translating requirements into efficient design implementation projects, and managing the initiatives through the development life cycle to achieve streamlined business processes. Before forming Point North Consulting, Mr. Crandall was the CEO/Owner of Crandall Technologies, a consulting firm in Gainesville, FL (1996-2000), serving small to medium sized businesses with a focus on Business Process Re-engineering, Technical Architecture, Data Mining, and Business Intelligence.

Mr. Crandall was educated at the University of Florida, studying Materials Science Engineering and Business Administration as an undergraduate. After being accepted to University of Florida’s Masters Program in Decision and Information Sciences (DIS), Mr. Crandall was invited to participate in the selective Ph.D.program in DIS. He completed the coursework for the degree, but opted to enter the business sector to consult small and medium-sized businesses full time.

Will PMI Agree that BA Must Precede Projects?

Written by Marcos Ferrer on . Posted in Articles.

Behold the world’s shortest BA column (well, for me so far, anyway):

We have been discussing the great challenges to BA that I listed a few months ago.

Last month I dumped my own idea – that of having professional recognition for BAs at the level of accountants and attorneys. Not having it or having it – either way it is a great challenge for the profession (for now, we hide, not knowing what to do).

This month, I make the following points about PMI and IIBA cooperation, the second great challenge:

Many PMPs, upon first meeting a CBAP (myself) say: “I wish they would turn you guys loose before management just dumps some of the “projects” (actual word was not projects) they dump on us!”

Point well taken – it is a lot easier to make project estimates and plans when decent scoping and some due diligence (requirements and stakeholder investigation) is done up front.

When things do change, they are likely to be less radical, or if radical, they tend to pay of way better for the trouble taken to discover them (always remember that every project is a “team PhD” research effort, and change can be good when learning leads the way).

It is not fair to dump on PMPs. It IS dumping when a list of what Ivar Jacobsen calls “requirements assertions” gets laid on a project manager with a budget and a deadline. I get to say this because usually the PM dumps it on me (the BA), so I know, I know.

I acknowledge that this approach does not violate the rule of “you can tell me how fast, you can tell me how much, or you can tell me how good – pick any two”.

It doesn’t, because management only tells how long and how much – they typically DON’T tell how good, they just pretend they did, so they can complain and blame when they don’t get what they “wanted”.

Finally – how the HECK does anyone do earned value, when they aren’t even sure what anything is worth?

I call on PMPs to acknowledge this pre-project “analysis” gap, and to support BAs in the important task of filling it.

Don’t go crazy – not every project is worth a business case, and doesn’t that say something right there?

Let me know if you agree.

A New Series about Requirements Management and Much More

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles.

calendar-deadline-aug15.pngMore interesting and informative articles and blogs again, this month! A couple of new articles, one of which is the first in a new four-part series. Our bloggers are back and there are a couple of news items in our IIBA section we’re sure will get your attention. 

Introducing the new BA Times bookstore and library!

We are pleased to announce that the BA Times bookstore and library is now live! You can review and buy books, suggest new ones to add to the library, and write reviews and ratings!

  • I Don’t Have Time to Manage Requirements; My Project is Late Already! Elizabeth Larson and Richard Larson take a look at how imposed deadlines can really have a negative affect to requirements management and, ultimately, the project itself. 
  • Documents; The Neglected Side of Business Information Automation. Many companies are working to acquire or develop high tech business solutions. Mark Crandall believes that people, processes, paper and technology must work together to achieve success. 
  • The Need for Speed. Adam Kahn worries about the fact that so many of us are having to do more with less, but he offers some practical tips to make your time go further.
  • Will PMI Agree that BA Must Precede Projects? It’s a lot easier to make project estimates and plans if a BA has been there first. That’s the view that Marcos Ferrer shares with us in his blog.
  • The Value of CBAP Certification and IIBA Monthly Webinars Start August 26, 2008. Two important announcements from IIBA that are well-worth checking out, especially if you’re considering CBAP certification.

Where will BA and PM Professionals Come from? Next Steps

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles.

This is the seventh and final article in this series. The first six articles were:

#1 Is It Time for the BA and the PM to Get Hitched?
#2 Effective Requirements Gathering and Management Needs the Skills of both the BA and PM
#3 An Examination of the BA and PM Skills Profiles
#4 A First Pass at Defining the BA/PM Position Family
#5 A First Look under the Hood of the BA/PM Position Family
#6 A Second Look under the Hood of the BA/PM Position Family

These articles described the BA/PM professional, why we need such a professional, how the BA/PM position family and career path might be defined and what a professional development program might look like. This closing article focuses on the next steps that might be taken to bring the BA/PM professional into reality. In total then the seven articles lay out by example a blueprint for moving forward. Early in the 1990s, I had the opportunity to design, build and deploy a similar application for IT professionals. Many of the components of that application are analogs of the system I am proposing below. The technology is much more sophisticated now, but I have been there and done that. The following is my suggestion for the system that can provide for the career planning and professional development of BA/PM professionals. It is the logical consequence of the six previous articles.

A System to Prepare BA/PM Professionals

The project to design and develop this system will be a challenging project, but you already should have guessed that. Like every effective project manager, let’s begin this project with what I call a Project Overview Statement (POS). For the PMs this is similar to your PMBOK Project Charter. For the BAs this is similar to your BABOK Project Scope Statement. This POS will be the framework and guide for all project work to follow. For reference purposes, this project will be called the PDP Systems Design and Development Project. This article does not discuss deployment. Deployment of the PDP System is left for another project and is briefly mentioned below.

Project Overview Statement

The POS is the first document that describes a proposed project. It is a high-level description of a business situation and what you propose to do about it. It is a one page document with five parts. I have used it for more than 40 years with great success. For the PDP Systems Design and Development Project here is my version of the five parts of the POS.

Problem/ Opportunity
The project landscape is changing. Complexity and uncertainty dominate. Only rarely can requirements be completely defined and documented at the outset. An agile approach to these projects is highly recommended. To be effective in managing these projects the agile project manager must be fully skilled in both project management and business analysis.

Goal
Design and develop an internet-based career planning and professional development system to prepare professionals to be both project managers and business analysts at all levels of skill and competency so that they are fully capable of successfully managing projects at all levels of complexity and uncertainty. This new professional is called a BA/PM professional.

Objectives

  • Define the BA/PM position family
  • Define the BA/PM career paths
  • Identify the skills and competencies required of the BA/PM professional
  • Establish the minimum skill/competency proficiency profile of each BA/PM professional
  • Define the internet-based Professional Development Program (PDP)
  • Design the skill and competency assessment tools portfolio
  • Design the career planning module
  • Design the professional development module
  • Design the integrated PDP System
  • Develop the integrated PDP System
  • Document the integrated PDP System

Success Criteria

  • The PDP System will be a thin client internet-based system
  • The PDP System will be ready for deployment within 12 months of starting the project
  • The PDP System will be parameter-driven and fully support user definable PM and BA position families, career paths and skill/competency profiles
  • Using the PDP System will not require any training – it will be intuitive.
  • The PDP System will not have a User Guide.

Assumptions, Risks, Obstacles 

  • The need for a BA/PM professional will not be acceptable to the entire BA and PM communities
  • The project will be co-managed by a representative from the PM community and a representative from the BA community
  • Qualified technical resources will be made available when needed to design and build the PDP System
  • The BA and PM communities will be honest participants in reviewing and commenting on the PDP System
  • An agile project management approach will successfully deliver the PDP System
  • A sponsor can be found to financially support the project

Suggested High-level Work Breakdown Structure

Once the POS has been approved by representatives from both the BA and PM communities detailed project planning can begin. A high-level work breakdown structure might look something like the following:

Phase I   Scoping the PDP System

  1. Describe the PDP System Task Force purpose and membership
  2. Recruit the PDP System Task Force members
  3. Plan and hold the PDP System Kick-off Meeting
  4. Synthesize current BABOK and PMBOK position definition & documentation
  5. Document the requirements of the desired PDP System

Phase II   PDP System High-level Design 

  1. Define and document the PDP System deliverables
  2. Define and document the PDP System process flow
  3. Gain approval of the PDP System high-level design

Phase III  PDP System Detailed Design & Documentation

  1. Recruit the PDP System Development Team
  2. Design the documentation format and templates
  3. Construct the PDP System documentation
  4. Circulate PDP System documentation for review
  5. Revise PDP System documentation
  6. Gain approval of the PDP System detailed design

Phase IV  PDP System Development

  1. Recruit PDP System Development co-project managers
  2. Recruit PDP System Development Team
  3. Review the PDP System documentation
  4. Define the PDP System Technical Requirements and Architecture
  5. Prioritize PDP System Requirements
  6. Define PDP System Development cycles (plan, build, check) and time boxes
  7. Execute PDP System Development Cycles
  8. Demonstrate having met the requirements of the PDP System Task Force
  9. Discharge the PDP System Development Team

Phase V  PDP System Marketing

  1. Create the PDP System Marketing Program
  2. Plan and publish PDP System articles
  3. Design and produce PDP System promotional materials
  4. Distribute PDP System promotional materials
  5. Discharge PDP System Task Force

A Call to Action

So there you have it! The complexity and challenge of the PDP System Design and Development Project should not be underestimated. Its importance cannot be overstated either. It is my firm belief that having BA/PM professionals on your staff will have a significant impact on project success.

Testimonial data that I have gathered over the years from over 10,000 project managers worldwide suggests that over 70% of all projects are in the agile category. These projects are such that requirements identification and solution definition can only come about from learning and discovery during project execution. That requires that some form of iterative approach be employed. This is clearly the domain of the agile project and requires the leadership of the BA/PM professional. That they are needed is not debatable. The processes to develop them are by no means obvious or in place.

Through this and the preceding articles I’ve tried to build the case for formally recognizing the need for the BA/PM professional and for the systems to meet their career planning and professional development needs. I’ve taken a pass at the high-level work breakdown structure as the beginnings of the project plan to put the requisite PDP System in place to support those needs.

How might we make that plan happen? If your organization sees the importance and the need for such a system and suffers the pains of frequently occurring distressed projects and excessive project failure, perhaps they would be interested in funding a PDP Systems Design, Development and Deployment Project to meet their own needs. This would get us off to a fast track start. Could your employer be one of those companies?

Alternatively, a BA or PM product/service provider might be interested in adding the PDP System to their portfolio through a joint venture to design, develop, market and sell the PDP System. Do you work for such a company?

In any case the next step for me is to recruit a BA professional who would be interested in partnering with me to take a BA/PM advocacy position and then to begin working on the PDP System. If you and I are of like mind, if you are an accomplished BA professional, if you have name recognition in the BA community, if you have some time and would like to make a difference, I would like to hear from you. My direct email is [email protected]. I’m serious!

Robert K. Wysocki, Ph.D., has over 40 years experience as a project management consultant and trainer, information systems manager, systems and management consultant, author, training developer and provider. He has written fourteen books on project management and information systems management. One of his books, Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme,3rd Edition, has been a best seller and is recommended by the Project Management Institute for the library of every project manager. He has over 30 publications in professional and trade journals and has made more than 100 presentations at professional and trade conferences and meetings. He has developed more than 20 project management courses and trained over 10,000 project managers.