Learn from a certified business analyst the 7 key steps in collecting project requirements efficiently. Watch for the free template included in the video.
hello my name’s Eddie have and I’m gonna talk to you about a seven step process for how you would go about collecting requirements for your project first let’s talk about what a requirement is our requirement is either a condition or a capability that is required from you by a stakeholder for a specific project so when we talk about conditions we might mean contractual terms obligations compliance requirements timeframes or budgets or policies that you need to comply with when we talk about capabilities these could be features that your stakeholders need so something like it must be blue or it must be 8 feet eye or it must run at a certain speed these are capabilities that your solution needs to have so it’s either going to be a condition or it’s going to be a capability you may be asked by your organization’s management to come up with a solution or modify some existing solution for anything inside your organization so it could be a business process it could be some technology it could be some automation requirement but you know the need may come in different form the need is something that your senior management wants and the solution is going to be implemented through requirements the need comes from the business and it represents some sort of an outcome that they’re hoping to have and the requirement which is what you will come up with this is the makeup or the specific pieces of that design that represents the outcome so requirements would be line items 1 2 3 4 5 something that says these are the items that we need so that we can give you that outcome that you require which is what you stated in your need so we start typically with understanding what is the business need for the organization ok so starting with the business need I’m going to make that my now here’s the thing a lot of analysts and a lot of project managers rush quickly to try to find a solution and that’s a mistake it’s a mistake in the sense that you probably don’t have a clear understanding of what your management’s asking for if I said implement SharePoint and this is going to be used by 50 people in the organization and that’s pretty clear but if I ask you to find a solution for me for let’s say how we communicate and I didn’t really specify what the what the final product is then I’m just looking for an outcome so your goal your first goal is the first meet with the sponsor or whoever’s asking you for this and understand what is their need what is the outcome that they looking for what are can you put some numbers against that outcome do you have all the specifics do you know how many people will be impacted by this do you know why they want this what sorts of performance are they looking to get out of this what issue is this supposed to be resolving so that kind of quality early on in a project will ensure that you’re on the right track so assuming you are able to get a business need then the next step that you want to do here is find out your limitations or your constraints so ask yourself what are my constraints how much time do I have so time is one of those money is another one of these resources and there could be some other constraints like rules and policies and regulations all right so assuming you know what your constraints are then you need to go to the third step but do I know what I need to know so what does this mean let’s say you ask me to implement shape points across the organization or maybe you ask me to convert all of our printing into some centralized printing solution my question to myself would be what does this take do I know the technology though I know how many people do I know the location though I know how much do I know what what specific functionality you’re looking for do you know do I know the volume of work that is going to go through the system so those questions that I have in mind are going to be answered by specific people or certain documentation so now what you’re going to do is create a list that says item number one that I need to know is how many people will use the solution item number two how much are they willing to spend which was probably covered in step number two here in the constraints item number three for example the location item number four are there any rules that I need to follow and item number five would you know maybe what systems are in place right now that will need to be replaced by the new system so you will need to figure out you need to make a list of all the things that you need to figure out for this solution so assuming you figured out all the items that you need clarification on then you go to step number four and step number four is who or what can provide me this information and the who would be people these would be your stakeholders in your organization could be business managers department heads could be your colleagues could be the admins who are going to be using the solution so now you know there are certain pieces of information that you need to collect let’s say you needed to collect informations a B C D and E the question is who provides me the information for a who provides me the information for B and if it’s not who then what it is probably a document it is probably something that is published on the internet or maybe it’s a supplier that you need to get in touch with who can provide you such information so here what you want to do is you want to connect whoo which is a P which is a person with the information that you need to collect or if it’s not a who it’s probably going to be a document a database or some form of documented information whether it’s digital or in paper but or it could be from a supplier but what will provide you the information so between the hooves and the what’s you should be able to figure out the sources of where the information is going to come from all right so that if you figured the who and the what then you go to the 5th step and in the 5th step would be how will I collect the information now the how those are requirements gathering techniques and these techniques would vary depending on what it is that you need to collect some of the most common techniques that we use would be interviews where you meet with different stakeholders at scheduled times for about 20 minutes or so an hour depending on how much information they have and you try to get some clarification on the gaps clarification on what the information that you figured you need to know you needed to know for example how many users will use the solution in step number four you figured for example some administrative officers the person who knows this so you go and meet with that person and you do an interview so that will be step number five the techniques that you’ll use so step number five will be the techniques that you will use in collecting requirements interviews workshops focus groups and you could also go to the what which is you know document review and research market research benchmarking you can reach out to suppliers ask for manuals review them these are all the wats and the who’s you could also do a prototyping you could do brainstorming sessions and there’s quite a few techniques in a different video I will discuss all these requirements gathering techniques so be sure to go and look for my other video on requirements gathering techniques so what you need to do now is come up with a plan not a plan but a list or identify against every requirement what technique you’re going to you let’s just say I have a requirement requirement one for example number of users number of users that will be using this system so that’s my first requirement right and I figured so this is the information that I need to know so that’s step number three that’s addressed in step number three then in step number four who let’s just say IT manager is going to be the person that provides that information then the next question the next step would be how do I get this information from them so now we have an interview all right so if I want to link them that’s your step number three that’s your step number four that’s your step number five there all right now this same IT manager probably is going to provide you information on the technology behind it or the interfaces required so let’s say your other requirement here is so that’s requirement number two interfaces and you figured that it’s also going to be the IT manager and now the best way to get this information could be and let’s say an interview right but it also could be a document review where you have to review some document with this IT manager so now you know that if you’re going to be meeting with this IT manager that you probably don’t want it you probably don’t want to just talk about number of users you probably want to discuss the interfaces so you would plan ahead and let this IT manager know that you’re going to also review some documents in case they can get this ready for you so here we see that some of these users needs the users and their time that you have to plan out in advance who am I going to meet for which points and you are trying to minimize the number of meetings that you’re going to have a lot of these users and especially senior management doesn’t want to be troubled every single moment you can’t call them today and talk about number of users call them tomorrow and talk about interface this end and then on the third day or one week later call them and say hey I forgot this and you know do you have a couple of minutes to discuss this not everyone’s going to be cool with that so what you want to do is figure out for every requirement who or what is going to provide you this information take a look at them and figure the best technique from you know available techniques or well-known techniques that you would use to minimize the time frame for collecting the requirements mind you with regards to time frame you also have to consider step number two constraints you may have a limited time for you to get this done and if you are really tight on time then workshops might work much better than interviews because you can just bring everybody there into a two or four hour workshop with some snacks and you can just sort things out if you have a lot more time than yeah any of yous will probably be you know a good option for you to do all right so figure out how you’re going to collect this information using the techniques and then once you figured all the techniques that you want to use now go to step number six which is when when I collect info and that would be your schedule so you’re going to develop some sort of a schedule and that you can just put at the top here so if I want to figure here that lets say I plan for Monday at nine eight that’s step number six for me I figured Monday at 9:00 a.m. I’m going to do an interview and review some documents with the IT manager to understand these key points does that make sense so here step number three number of number of users is a requirement and step number four this is who’s going to provide it and step number five this is how I’m going to get this information using that technique step number six is when I’m going to get that information so when you develop the schedule as I previously discussed you probably want to plan out plan out the best and the best timing or duration or techniques that will minimize the number of interactions that you’re going to have with these stakeholders so that they don’t get bothered by what you’re doing so now let’s say you develop the schedule the next step that you want to do is ask yourself what will I need to collect info and in this step what I mean is people or tools so here I’m just going to write people or team and tools so you have to ask yourself do I is this something that I can do by myself do I need a team do I need someone to help me for the time frame for step number two where I have limited time or limited money what can i afford for people would I be able to do this myself by looking at the schedule if it looks like you need three months to get something done and your management is pushing for something to be done in one month then obviously you’re going to need some help and agreeing to do this by yourself would be just you know suicide you’re just trying to you know you’re leading yourself to failure and you don’t want to do this so ask yourself and see if you can arrange for these specific team members or tools that you need whether it’s software or people now if you’re able to get these people the team and the tools then the final step here is just do it right because now you have everything that you need you can go ahead and implement your plan you can just go to implementation at this point okay so just a recap you first get a need from your senior management they ask you to find a solution a brand new solution or a replacement or an enhancement for something that you have in place the first thing you want to do is meet with them understand the need try to frame that need with numbers whether it’s a problem or an opportunity find out what the constraints are which is step number two time money people resources location find out what it is that they’ve put for boundaries for you and then step number three ask yourself what do I need to know for me to get this done and you know this could be pieces of information or gaps in the information once you know that ask yourself who will provide you this information or what what is the document that will provide you this information if you can figure that then go to the next step which is how would I collect this information and this could mean you know figuring out different techniques that would work for different instances and different pieces of information then schedule time to go and collect this information through interviews brainstorming sessions workshops prototyping sessions or maybe by you know doing benchmarking and market research and then once you develop the schedule if you if you’re trying to make it fit within within a specific time frame then ask yourself if you will need additional team members or if you need specific tools to speed this up sometimes what you will need could just be support from your management maybe a phone call to the admin on the other side of the new manager on the other side to prep them that you’re going to go there so far figure out what you will need to do what you will need to have for you to be able to go and collect this information once you have this kind of support whether it’s team tools or support from your management then your plan is ready at that point you’re ready to implement I hope you enjoyed this seven step process for how you collect requirements and if you if you have any comments please please put your notes down below and if you have if you like what you heard and you’d like to hear more from me from my upcoming videos that would be related to this then you know please subscribe and if you feel someone else could benefit from this please share with them thank you for watching and I hope to see you soon on my next video
