Technical Consultants

You have a 50% chance of getting this one right; do you want to ponder a guess? The goal of requirements gathering is to achieve stakeholder sign-off of the business requirements of the project. So let’s say you do everything right, you go through a few phases of requirements elicitation using several different elicitation techniques. You put together a well crafted Requirements Document and get the project primary stakeholders to sign-off on it. All this happens before development begins. You are on the right track. This is going to be successful, right? Your business solution developed by your IT staff is going to fulfill all the project requirements and be a huge success.
 

Kupe explains how the Dallas Cowboys went through all those steps. They went above and beyond the NFL requirement. Received sign-off from the NFL. They built their new stadium with a very impressive jumbo-tron above the field. Sixty feet long, 90 feet above the field. Anybody see a problem here yet. Well evidently neither did the Cowboys nor the NFL; until the third quarter of the first preseason game of the season when the opposing team’s punter hit the jumbo sized screen with his kick. This caused a do-over in the game, and I now understand that they have an extra official at the field whose job is to ensure that any kick does not hit the video screen.

So the IT business solution didn’t work for the stakeholders, namely the Dallas Cowboys and the NFL. So where did they go wrong? Kupe goes on to describe the flaw in the height requirement that made the end result unsuccessful.

This is a prime example of going through all the right steps, get the stakeholders sign-off, and the business solution does not deliver the expected result. So the Business Analyst job in the requirements gathering phase of a project is not only to gather the requirements that the stakeholders are telling you, but go beyond that and capture the requirements that the stakeholders either haven’t thought of, or just don’t know. Kupe’s article gives good point that simulation of punting in the stadium might have drawn out the flaw before the one million ton video screen was installed. Now how much will it cost to move that? Simulation is not one of the requirements gathering techniques that the IIBA^® emphasizes, but most certainly can be used as such when the circumstance dictates.

The moral of this story is to be sure to use the correct requirements gathering techniques to draw out all the business requirements so that your end business solution will meet the needs of the stakeholders. That is what will ensure success of your IT business solutions.