How to Collect Business Requirements?

Question

What's the best way (and current way) to collect business requirements?. I've heard about JAD (Joint Application Design or Development). So, it is, Is there software apps for that?.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've done a lot of Use Cases; and yes, there is a tool for that - RequisitePro and SoDA reports. Don't know if it is the best way but it is quite good for eliciting requirements.

Answer 2

Although this is far from all you'd need to know about gathering requirements, I think the single most important idea is Tom Gilb's Juicy Bits First principle.

If you deliver the juiciest bits of the project first, you will be forgiven for not providing all they dreamt about, or for not doing it as cheaply and quickly as they hoped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Gilb

The reason this is so important is that gathering a "complete" set of requirements is often so difficult as to be practically impossible, and usually isn't even necessary. Most of what a customer says they want is not nearly as important as a few key things, and then there will be usually a lot of detailed requirements that only become apparent when they've had some experience using the first version.

Answer 3

The best way I've found to get good requirements from a customer is to sit them down in front of a demo of what they've said they want. Then they have something concrete to react to.

Because building an entire prototype is often cost- and time-prohibitive, this is best done in stages: show 'em the first part, roll their feedback into the next part, repeat.

How much in the way of (partial, incomplete, vague) requirements you need to get started will depend on what you're doing. Try asking "what's something simple I could show you to give us both some assurance that I'm heading the right direction", then get enough detail to put together something they can lay their hands on. That'll kick-start an incremental cycle.

Whatever you end up doing, look with skepticism on any methodology that doesn't build in early feedback.

Answer 4

USE JAD

9 Key Steps

1. Identify project objectives and limitations It is vital to have clear objectives for the workshop and for the project as a whole. The pre-workshop activities, the planning and scoping, set the expectations of the workshop sponsors and participants. Scoping identifies the business functions that are within the scope of the project. It also tries to assess both the project design and implementation complexity. The political sensitivity of the project should be assessed. Has this been tried in the past? How many false starts were there? How many implementation failures were there? Sizing is important. For best results, systems projects should be sized so that a complete design - right down to screens and menus - can be designed in 8 to 10 workshop days.
2. Identify critical success factors It is important to identify the critical success factors for both the development project and the business function being studied. How will we know that the planned changes have been effective? How will success be measured? Planning for outcomes assessment helps us judge the effectiveness and the quality of the implemented system over its entire operational life.
3. Define project deliverables In general, the deliverables from a workshop are documentation and a design. It is important to define the form and level of detail of the workshop documentation. What types of diagrams will be provided? What type or form of narrative will be supplied? It is a good idea to start using a CASE tool for diagramming support right from the start. Most of the available tools have well to great diagramming capabilities but their narrative support is generally weak. The narrative is best produced with your standard word processing software.
4. Define the schedule of workshop activities Workshops vary in length from one to five days. The initial workshop for a project should not be less than three days. It takes the participants most of the first day to get comfortable with their roles, with each other, and with the environment. The second day is spent learning to understand each other and developing a common language with which to communicate issues and concerns. By the third day, everyone is working together on the problem and real productivity is achieved. After the initial workshop, the team-building has been done. Shorter workshops can be scheduled for subsequent phases of the project, for instance, to verify a prototype. However, it will take the participants from one to three hours to re-establish the team psychology of the initial workshop.
5. Select the participants These are the business users, the IS professionals, and the outside experts that will be needed for a successful workshop. These are the true "back bones" of the meeting who will drive the changes.
6. Prepare the workshop material Before the workshop, the project manager and the facilitator perform an analysis and build a preliminary design or straw man to focus the workshop. The workshop material consists of documentation, worksheets, diagrams, and even props that will help the participants understand the business function under investigation.
7. Organize workshop activities and exercises The facilitator must design workshop exercises and activities to provide interim deliverables that build towards the final output of the workshop. The pre-workshop activities help design those workshop exercises. For example, for a Business Area Analysis, what's in it? A decomposition diagram? A high-level entity-relationship diagram? A normalized data model? A state transition diagram? A dependency diagram? All of the above? None of the above? It is important to define the level of technical diagramming that is appropriate to the environment. The most important thing about a diagram is that it must be understood by the users. Once the diagram choice is made, the facilitator designs exercises into the workshop agenda to get the group to develop those diagrams. A workshop combines exercises that are serially oriented to build on one another, and parallel exercises, with each sub-team working on a piece of the problem or working on the same thing for a different functional area. High-intensity exercises led by the facilitator energize the group and direct it towards a specific goal. Low-intensity exercises allow for detailed discussions before decisions. The discussions can involve the total group or teams can work out the issues and present a limited number of suggestions for the whole group to consider. To integrate the participants, the facilitator can match people with similar expertise from different departments. To help participants learn from each other, he can mix the expertise. It's up to the facilitator to mix and match the sub-team members to accomplish the organizational, cultural, and political objectives of the workshop. A workshop operates on both the technical level and the political level. It is the facilitator's job to build consensus and communications, to force issues out early in the process. There is no need to worry about the technical implementation of a system if the underlying business issues cannot be resolved.
8. Prepare, inform, educate the workshop participants All of the participants in the workshop must be made aware of the objectives and limitations of the project and the expected deliverables of the workshop. Briefing of participants should take place 1 to 5 days before the workshop. This briefing may be teleconferenced if participants are widely dispersed. The briefing document might be called the Familiarization Guide, Briefing Guide, Project Scope Definition, or the Management Definition Guide - or anything else that seems appropriate. It is a document of eight to twelve pages, and it provides a clear definition of the scope of the project for the participants. The briefing itself lasts two to four hours. It provides the psychological preparation everyone needs to move forward into the workshop.
9. Coordinate workshop logistics Workshops should be held off-site to avoid interruptions. Projectors, screens, PCS, tables, markers, masking tape, Post-It notes, and lots of other props should be prepared. What specific facilities and props are needed is up to the facilitator. They can vary from simple flip charts to electronic white boards