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» Ensuring Requirements Gathering Success in an Agile Environment

Statistics:Article Rating (4675 Views) (1 Comments) Print
Posted: Thursday, July 16, 2009
Categories: Agile Methods, Elicitation (BABOK KA)

Quality requirements contribute to the success of agile and traditional project management projects. The requirements definition process followed in a traditional project management framework and the features-based storyboarding that is typical of agile approaches are different, but they also have many similarities. The actual process used to define and gather requirements may be different, but the criteria for quality requirements remain constant. What are these similarities and differences in the process of gathering requirements? What happens to the role of the business analyst in an agile environment?

Requirements are requirements no matter the approach used, be it agile or traditional. In order to begin to understand the differences between requirements development and management in an agile environment and in a traditional environment, one must first be clear on the definition of a requirement, and then understand the core principles of requirements development and management.

Author: Nancy Y. Nee, PMP

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At the highest level, there are two catagories of requirements gathering:

1.) Following the flow of data and let that discovery process prod the analyst through rigorous discovery of functional requirements. (Identifyication of data flows is the lithmus test of completedness for functional analysis. If the analyst does not ID the data flows, it is impossible to tell what is missing.) Example: Data Flow Diagrams. BPMN diagrams also allow for capturing of data flows, however, they discount the importance of them.

2.) Write up requirements as they happen to pop into your mind. No lithmus test of completedness is used. Examples: Use Cases, User Stores.

Both approaches can be used on an agile project. (Yes, data flow diagrams are just as appropriate with small iterations as in a pure waterfall approach.) Granted, realistically, the business subject matter experts will probably only use user stories (because of their simplicity). And having the business people proactively document requirements is the way to go. But, especially on a larger scale project, unless a lithmus test of completedness is utilized at some point, big problems will occur - agile or not.

Tony

posted @ Thursday, July 23, 2009 12:14 PM by ajmarkos


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