In association with: Optimizing Requirements Discovery. We ll be starting shortly

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1 In association with: Optimizing Requirements Discovery You will need to dial into the conference call line provided on your screen to receive audio. Technical difficulties? Please dial: for support on video for support on audio and remember the webinar ID We ll be starting shortly

2 Optimizing Requirements Discovery An executive discussion on getting success through clear, accurate, and complete requirements Keith Ellis Vice President, Marketing IAG Consulting

3 Learning Objectives Executive perspectives on making requirements change Techniques for optimizing requirements discovery The tactics of requirements competency development

4 Who We Are IAG Consulting is solely focused on business and software requirements Core Competency: Elicitation A deliverable from IAG is: Clear, Accurate and Complete Work with clients in 4 modes: Requirements Discovery and Management Analyst Professional Development Best Practices Implementation Turn-key Center of Excellence

5 Our Experience: 12 Years of living requirements excellence: Completed over 1,200 requirements projects Worked with over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies in the last 10 years Trains over 1,200 business analysts annually Somewhat in excess of 700 clients using our methods 50 staff members all 100% focused on excellence in business requirements Annually invested 10% of our revenue in developing our methods, processes and techniques to assure that these are harmonized and industry best practices

6 Executive Perspective Issues to discuss The requirements phase of projects is risky Inconsistency is expensive Facilitation excellence is necessary for consensus and timeliness Process can be improved or is broken Unnecessary requirements change Ineffective use of delivery resource Effective use of executive time Compliance issue or dramatic change needed in project performance

7 How good is your organization at defining requirements? We do an excellent job on We re about requirements average We re poor at defining requirements

8 There is a Steep Premium to be Paid for Poor Quality Requirements 70% 60% BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS PREMIUM* Premium paid 50% 40% 30% 20% Budget 10% 0% High Quality Requirements Time Low Quality Requirements N=109 Source: IAG Business Analysis Benchmark, 2008 * Average increase in the overrun on time or cost versus projects that used high quality requirements

9 Case Study: Michigan DOT RFP Outsourced Development SafeStat: Monitor and track the progress of traffic and safety projects $1 million project Compressed requirements discovery into 2 week timetable 10 weeks from start to design RFP responses from domestic vendors were +/- $30K (IBM, EDS, etc) Able to use precision in requirements to secure performance guarantees Brought project in 33% under budget Reduced ongoing maintenance costs Without this process, we would have spent the entire $1m we had budgeted. Plus, we may have encountered scope creep that could have pushed the costs up even higher

10 Deeper Dive into Our Methodology and Deliverables

11 The Requirements Dilemma How do you serve diverse needs well? Executive: What change is happening and will I get the functionality and information needed? Business: Is there a proactive, efficient way to get process and interdependencies identified? Designer: What are the series of highly cohesive and loosely coupled system components? Enterprise Architect: How do we expect the solution to interact with the existing architecture? Tester: What are all the paths of logic through this process? Project Manager: Have we identified issues, scope, timeline and achieved consensus?

12 Focusing on the what not the how Requirements: you will always be describing a process Somebody Does something With some information Person or the system Process: Verb Data: Noun This is: Scoping and High Level Requirements

13 A logical way to extract business process Example: Customer Order Management Scoping: Determine High-Level Scenario 1. Receive an order 2. Price an order 3. Fulfill an order 4. Ship an order Set products How do in I get catalogue from (X) Promotions? Trigger to (Y) Outcome? Dispatch? (X) Inquiry CUSTOMER Store/ Products/ Price/ Promotions Previous Order FINANCIAL INSTITUTION Order Reciept Order Credit Card Authorization Customer Info. Method Of Payment Deposits Order/ Payment Confirmation COM SYSTEM Order Details Understand system context Delivery Details Transactions Product Promotions Payment THIRD PARTY DELIVERY COMPANY ACCOUNTING SYSTEM MARKETING High-Level: Determine Activity-Level Scenario 1. Verify contact information 2. Validate the customer 3. Take/Record the order 4. Confirm the order

14 Black Box versus White Box Understanding Getting to clear, accurate and complete Suppliers of information Validate the Customer Input What information do you need access to? Could Process you build it? What do you do with the information? Output What s the normal Outcome? Customer Who do you make it available to? Must have: Conditions/constraints, Variations, Rules/policies, Data required in the process, Interdependency, Clear process

15 Discovering Detail Efficiently Determine Detailed Process Description 1. Determine if customer exists, using either 1. Phone number 2. Last Name 2. If exist: Display customer information 3. If no exist: Display no match found (create new customer) 4. If >1 match: Display all matches 5. Determine (select) match (Display customer information) 6. Verify identity, using both 1. Zip code 2. Password 7. If no verify: (terminate) 8. If change update information Goal: Could you build it? Is it clear for all stakeholders? Complete & Unambiguous Process, Interdependencies, Data Requirements, Clear Business Requirements Validate the customer Structured Statement of System Capability 1. The system shall be capable of accessing a customer file using either a phone number or last name 2. The system shall be capable of displaying customer information when given a request for an existing customer s data 3. The system shall be capable of creating a new customer 4. The system shall be capable of displaying a list of all customers with the same phone number or last name to the operator, 5. The system shall be capable of enabling an operator to select a name from a listing of multiple customers where multiple customers have the same name and/or phone number 6. The system shall display to the operator zip code and customer password when a customer record is selected, and prompt the operator that the identity was correctly validated by the customer 7. The system shall enable a customer to update information given a correct password, but incorrect zip code.

16 Business Requirements Modeling Business Need CONTEXT MODEL Verbs HIGH LEVEL SCENARIO(s) Nouns IN SCOPE ACTIVITIES IN SCOPE ENTITIES USE CASES DATA DEFINITIONS Define pre and post conditions Define the entities Elicit scenarios (primary and variations) Model the activity / use case - data flow / use case diagrams - detailed steps/components Define the data elements needed Model the entity relationships Discover and describe the requirements, rules and considerations FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS DATA REQUIREMENTS DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS Review, Analysis & Validation Requirement Spec

17 Case Study: Global Food Manufacturer Implement major change to the business model Reduce order to delivery from 7 days to 36 hours Transform supply-chain management, traffic and transport, CRM, production planning, forecasting, marketing, and sales operations Reduced number of warehouse inventory touch points from 11,000 to 2,000 Engaged IAG at the pre-project scoping stage to drive project momentum Lead facilitation for total redesign of warehouse and inventory management processes 2 weeks to scope project: carved into 12 complex projects to be run by IAG IAG executed on detailing the business and software requirements for the 12 projects taking 1 to 3 weeks for each. You know that list of 7 high priority issues I don t think we d have caught number 2 until testing, and I figure number 5 wouldn t have been caught at all. Thanks, you guys just saved us a few million. SVP Operations

18 The Importance of Excellence in Elicitation

19 Leveraging Exceptional Competency to Get Excellent Project Results Project success ratios: organizations that excelled in 5 of 12 requirements discovery and management skills versus all others surveyed 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0.0% 12.8% Project is failure or almost failure 21.4% 45.7% Neither Successful nor Unsuccessful 78.6% 31.9% Project is Successful or Unqualified Success Uncover interdependencies Getting to unambiguous goals and objectives Quality of session facilitation Efficient use of stakeholder time Completed in short period Used Exceptional Elicitation Skills All Other Projects N=109 Source: IAG Business Analysis Benchmark, 2008

20 Case Study: Global Insurer Integrating multiple companies on a single back-end system 18 months doing reengineering to get a single window on a customer out of 15 separate systems. Could not move forward too complex, could not manage the consensus. IAG was brought in by the re-engineering company. Small team worked with 12 divisions to drill down to a harmonized process and data model Compressed cycle of elicitation for dispersed community of stakeholders: Video conference links and smart boards to manage distributed teams Ran 2 concurrent teams to meet time constraints 3 iterations delivered to the board: 4 weeks Business model 12 weeks Logical process and data model 16 weeks Ready to build system use cases

21 Making Effective Change

22 IAG Consultant Qualifications Serving the industry since 1997 Every consultant is consistent Rigorous Competency Development Highly Selective Recruitment Process Accredited Business Analyst Professionals Certified to specialization: Requirements Architects, Facilitators, OLTP, Data Warehousing, Managers and Trainers Senior people with solid business acumen Average over 20 yrs experience Current in Latest Practices Required professional development Training, speaking, writing and 3 rd party certification

23 A Practical Approach to Analyst Professional Development Testing and Examination Simulations Experiential Learning Coaching & Mentoring Total Approach to Analyst Development Course Work Base-line Setting & Performance Evaluation Self Study and Evaluation Accreditation Combine training with on-the-job coaching and mentoring Develop a multi-level accreditation that fits your company needs Track and manage through an accreditation management system Endorsed by:

24 Four Golden Rules for Making Change in the Area of Business Requirements Never underestimate the difficulty in making change People need to experience a new process to understand how it is different You can get stakeholders together Elicitation excellence takes time to build

25 A Path to Systematic Project Success 90% Project Success Ratios: Organizational score across 9 factors of areas of organizational maturity in requirement discovery and management 80% Per cent of Project Outcomes 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% Proportion of projects described as SUCCESSFUL Proportion of projects described as UNSUCCESSFUL 0% Lowest Level Highest Level Maturity of Business Analysis: (across people, process and technology of business analysis) N=109 Significance: a difference will be found in performance times in 100 Source: IAG Business Analysis Benchmark, 2007

26 Case Study: Large North American Bank Requirements Practices Integration Improvements to Requirements Management Process New templates, examples, instructions, etc. New Requirements Course curriculum Licensing of methodologies (Software Prioritization House of Quality) Requirements Simulation Programs Assessment Test Accreditation Program for Requirements Managers Web-based E-Learning Licenses

27 The Secret Sauce Experts in Elicitation Expert facilitators Using a superior process Applying tight quality control Operating in an accelerated environment Consolidating consensus with real-time documentation Significantly reduce rework

28 Metrics: What impact can IAG Consulting have Reduction in Changes to Requirements Pre-IAG Consulting Post-IAG Consulting Measured at 6 clients, across 36 projects! On projects undertaken between 1993 and 2002, six repeated measures on 36 projects in six subject organizations were collected on project, before and after implementing the IAG RDP and using BRP. ANOVA, Paired t-test and other statistical analyses were performed resulting in the conclusions in this paper. To ensure both before and after data sets are logically and methodologically comparable, between-subject variability was reduced through sets of project pairings of similar types and function points. This graph shows the number changes made to requirements prior to implementation. The measurement is number of changes per 100 requirements to factor out the size of a project. Changes to requirements are largely attributed to unambiguous, unclear or inaccurate interpretation of the user requirement. Changes are typically made during requirements review and sign-off, during design or prototype walkthroughs, and during testing. Changes also occur as maintenance change requests but these are not part of this measure. Changes counted in this measure are additions (due to missed, imprecise or inaccurate requirements), changes (due to inaccurate or ambiguous specifications) and valid removals. Requirements removed as a result of changes in project scope and implementation are not counted in this measure.

29 Discussion of next steps Typical Next Steps: 1:1 conversations about your projects Start leveraging the IAG assets to help you with your stakeholders Let us help you scope the business analysis effort Tell us about your ugly ducklings

30 Project Management Institute PDU Submission Information Webinar Name: Optimizing Requirements Discovery Total PDU's : 1.0 PDU Program Reference Number: IAG806 PMI Registered Education Provider: IAG Consulting PMI Registered Education Provider Number: 2858 CDU File Information Category 2- Professional Development Organization Information: Information Architecture Group (IAG) Contact: Keith Ellis, x228 Activity: Optimizing Requirements Discovery IIBA EEP: E003 (Information Architecture Group, Inc.) Program ID No: Pre-approved Beginning and ending dates: date of attendance # of CDU s Issued: 1 Thank you Contacting IAG: Keith Ellis x228 kellis@iag.biz Contacting Modern Analyst: Adrian Marchis (818) adrian@modernanalyst.com