Case Study Purpose
The purpose of the Trips-R-You Flight Booking Case Study is to provide an integrated, end-to-end set of requirement examples. In IIBA® BABOK® V3 terminology, end-to-end means from Business Requirements to Stakeholder Requirements to Solution and Transition Requirements. This case study, and associated artefacts, use the more traditional business terms Goals, High-level
Requirements (HLRs), and Detailed Requirements. Only functional requirements are addressed, and only within the context of a project chartered to deliver an IT-based solution.
The requirement examples included in this case study illustrate concepts presented in the
Requirements in Context series of articles, originally published in BATimes.com in 2016, and the Well-defined Data series, also published in BATimes.com, in 2018. The 2016 series has been updated by the author, and re-published in ModernAnalyst.com.
The following are links to the updated Requirements in Context series:
NOTE: The series would ideally be read in sequence, with subsequent articles building on concepts presented in prior articles. The last article includes a series summary and ‘take-away’ points.
NOTE: The series would ideally be read in sequence, with subsequent articles building on concepts presented in prior articles. The last article includes a series summary and ‘take-away’ points.
About the Author
Dan is the author of over 30 requirements-related articles and other resources. His 45+ year career in Information Technology has involved organizations in a variety of industry sectors in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. His business analysis experience includes projects involving in-house software development, software vendor solution development, and COTS software acquisition and implementation. He continues to be passionate about quality requirements and helping business analysts produce them. He can be contacted at [email protected].
About the Case Study
The case study involves a fictitious organisation — the Trips-R-You Travel Agency. The study deals with the requirements phase of an equally fictitious project, established to deliver a web-based customer self-service flight booking capability – often referred to as an Airline Reservation System.
The case study is divided into three sections, based on the three levels of requirements. The first section introduces the organization and a problem it faces. A goal is set that is intended to eliminate the problem, and a business case is commissioned to examine potential solutions.
The second section sees a project initiated to deliver the solution recommended by the business case. That project’s scope is shown, and how it leads to high-level requirements for the project.
The third section takes example HLRs to the detail level – one HLR involving each of the following functional capability types:
- User Interface
- Report
- Data Import
- Data Export
- Automated Function
To support capturing the details involved in each of the above capability types, type-specific specification tools are utilized.
Section 3 begins by presenting one additional tool - a Data Dictionary. As the detail for a given HLR is discussed, the data-specific business needs involved are captured using this tool. The idea is to add entries about record types and fields (i.e. entities and attributes) the first time their need is discussed (e.g. an HLR for a specific screen or report). Once captured, those data-specific details are available for reference when those needs come up again, as they will, during discussions involving other HLRs. The detail in the data dictionary is shown to support a transition requirement for a new or updated database schema.