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Dictionary.com defines a requirement as “that which is required; a thing demanded or obligatory”.
BABOK® is consistent with this. It defines a requirement as:
- A condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or achieve an objective
- A condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a solution or solution component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed documents.
- A documented representation of a condition or capability as in (1) or (2).
The purpose of documenting requirements is not to document detailed steps that someone performs – it is to communicate the outcome needed to achieve an objective. One problem that arises is when requirements are expressed as a document of the existing process – typically through a review of existing process documentation or through observation of people doing the job. As I have discussed in previous posts, just documenting process can lead you into the How Trap and it can fail to generate a useful shared understanding. These problems arise when the focus is on how stakeholders are currently doing the work and not on understanding the challenges, problem or objective. But, focusing on process is a problem in another way. It is an unstable lens.
Unstable
Modeling processes early in the elicitation process is not helpful to creating an appropriate understanding of the effort. Process reflects how people say they ought to do a task in perfect circumstances. The work is almost never consistently performed based on process documentation – or even how you observe the process being performed. Exceptions, reorganizations, changes in personnel within or adjacent to process, new tools and technologies, and innovation will change the process view. Even just asking five different people what the process is will likely produce five different results.
The process view can also propagate flawed understanding on the part of the people doing the work. You have likely heard the story about the recently married young women who was cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner in her own home. She had invited her family over the beautiful house she shared with her husband to show her parents how successful she had become and to demonstrate her gratitude to her parents. As she brought out the turkey for dinner her mother noticed the young women had cut the tail off of the turkey. The mother asked her daughter why she had cut the tail off the turkey. “Because that’s they way you always did it, Mom.” The mother smiled and replied, “That’s because the only pan we owned was too small for the turkey.”
A process based view hides assumption, complexity and is an unstable representation. The real requirement doesn’t change based on who you ask, who is doing the job, or the most recent reorganization. Basing requirements on unstable views doesn’t reflect the intent of the solution. This may result in an expression of the solution that doesn’t meet the needs of the business. As you observe a process or review process documentation ask why each step is important and what the intent of each step is. Consider what would happen if the steps were done in a different order or something was left out. Creating a stable, purpose driven view of the objective will provide valuable input to the development organization that will result in an improved solution.
