Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs

by Ellen Gottesdiener

Overview

Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs focuses on the human side of software development--how well we work with our customers and teammates. Experience shows that the quality and degree of participation, communication, respect, and trust among all the stakeholders in a project can strongly influence its success or failure. Ellen Gottesdiener points out that such qualities are especially important when defining user requirements and she shows in this book exactly what to do about that fact.

 

Gottesdiener shows specifically how to plan and conduct requirements workshops. These carefully organized and facilitated meetings bring business managers, technical staff, customers, and users into a setting where, together, they can discover, evolve, validate, verify, and agree upon their product needs. Not only are their requirements more effectively defined through this collaboration, but the foundation is laid for good teamwork throughout the entire project.

 

Other books focus on how to build the product right. Requirements by Collaboration focuses instead on what must come first--the right product to build.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780321630087
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	04/10/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ellen Gottesdiener is President of EBG Consulting, Inc., a firm providing facilitation, consulting, and training services for clients in a wide variety of industries. She is a pioneer in the use of facilitated workshops to elicit business rules and other user requirements. She is the author of numerous articles and several book contributions and is a highly regarded speaker at professional conferences.

Table of Contents

List of Figures.


List of Tables.


Preface.

The Organization of This Book.

Acknowledgments.

I. OVERVIEW OF REQUIREMENTS WORKSHOPS.

1. Getting Started with Requirements Workshops.

Essential Requirements.

Difficulties with Requirements.

Requirements Levels.

Surfacing User Requirements.

User Requirements Models.

Requirements Workshops.

Workshops and Collaboration.

Workshops and Facilitation.

How Workshops Differ from Typical Meetings.

Workshop Products.

Types of Requirements Workshops.

Other Uses for Workshops.

Workshops and Iterative Development.

Making the Business Case for a Requirements Workshop.

When Not to Use Requirements Workshops.

Summing Up.

For More Information.

2. Workshop Deliverables: Mining Coal, Extracting Diamonds.

The Evolution of Requirements.

Business Requirements.

User Requirements.

Software Requirements.

Model Views, Focuses, and Levels of Detail.

Model Views.

Model Focus.

Level of Detail.

Building the Models.

As-Is Models.

Multiple Models.

Model Briefings.

Actor Map.

Actor Table.

Business Policies.

Business Rules.

Context Diagram.

Decision Table or Decision Tree.

Domain Model.

Event Table.

Glossary.

Process Map.

Prototype.

Relationship Map.

Scenarios.

Stakeholder Classes.

Statechart Diagrams.

Use Cases.

Use Case Map.

Use Case Package.

User Interface Navigation Diagram.

For More Information.

3. Ingredients of a Successful Requirements Workshop.

A Shared Purpose.

The Right People.

Shared Space.

Wise Groups.

Pre-Work.

Focus Questions.

Serious Play.

Trust.

Process Variety.

Doneness Tests.

Collaborative Closure.

Flexible Structure.

Using Both Sides of the Brain.

Frequent Debriefs.

II. REQUIREMENTS WORKSHOP FRAMEWORK.

4. Purpose: Sharing a Common Goal.

Writing Your Workshop Purpose Statement.

Don't Assume Anything.

Seek the Stories.

Link Workshop Purpose with Project Vision.

Defining Project Scope.

Identifying the Workshop Sponsor.

Defining the Workshop Planning Team.

Sample Purpose Statements.

Purpose for Horizontal Top-Down Requirements Workshop.

Horizontal Middle-Out Requirements Workshop.

Horizontal Bottom-Up Requirements Workshop.

Vertical Strategy Requirements Workshop.

Zigzag Strategy Requirements Workshop.

Tips.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders.

Questions Related to Project Purpose.

Questions Related to Workshop Purpose.

For More Information.

5. Participants: Roles People Play.

Workshop Roles.

The Workshop Sponsor.

The Project Sponsor.

Having Sponsors in the Workshop.

Sponsor Kick-and-Close.

Content Participants.

Surrogate Users.

Ensuring Attendance.

The Recorder.

The Facilitator.

Facilitator as Planner and Designer.

Facilitator as Process Leader.

Facilitator Observation and Intervention Skills.

Other Facilitator Considerations.

Should You Hire an Outside Facilitator?

Observers.

On-Call Subject Matter Experts.

Tips.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders About Participant Roles.

For More Information.

6. Principles: Ground Rules for the Workshop.

Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

Basic Ground Rules.

Special Ground Rules.

Values-Based Ground Rules.

Culturally Aware Ground Rules.

Introducing and Testing Ground Rules.

Hidden Agendas.

Decision-Making Ground Rules.

Product and Process Decisions.

Collaborative Decision Making.

Decision Rules.

Reaching Closure.

A Real-World Example.

Tips.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders About Ground Rules.

For More Information.

7. Products: Ending with the Beginning.

Output Products.

Making Deliverables Visually Rich.

Select Models Aligned with the Business Problem.

Use Multiple Models.

Mix Text and Diagrammatic Models.

Mix Focuses and Views.

Define the Level of Detail.

Iteratively Deliver Requirements.

Prioritize the Deliverables.

Partition Requirements Across Workshops.

Define Doneness Tests.

Metaphors.

Doneness Testing and Decision Making.

Intangible Output Products.

Input Products.

The Workshop Agenda.

Draft Models.

System and User Documentation.

Pre-Work.

Templates.

Workshop Aids.

The Workshop Repository.

Tips.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders About Products.

For More Information.

8. Place: Being There.

Workshop Logistics.

Room Setup.

Creating Sticky Walls.

Preparing the Workshop Room.

Different Time and Place Options.

Videoconferencing.

Collaborative Technology.

Collaborative Technology Variants.

Collaborative Technology: A Caveat.

Tips.

Place Checklists.

For More Information.

9. Process: Plan the Work, Work the Plan.

Opening the Workshop.

The Opener.

Designing Activities.

Sequencing Activities.

Framing Activities.

Mini-Tutorials.

Elements of a Workshop Activity.

Sample Workshop Activity.

Estimating Activity Time.

Using Focus Questions.

Imagine This….

QA As You Go.

Collaborative Modes.

Collaboration Patterns.

Wall of Wonder.

Divide, Conquer, Correct, Collect.

Multi-Model.

Expand Then Contract.

The Sieve.

Combining Collaboration Patterns.

Collaborative Techniques.

Techniques for Guiding the Flow.

The Parking Lot.

Group Dynamics.

Conflict.

The Value of Conflict.

Group Dysfunction.

How to Deal with Difficult Participants.

Fun and Games.

Closing the Workshop.

The Show-and-Tell.

Addressing Parking Lot Items.

Final Debrief.

Tips.

Tools for the Workshop Process.

For More Information.

III. REQUIREMENTS WORKSHOP DESIGN STRATEGIES.

10. Workshop Navigation Strategies.

The Horizontal Strategy.

Picking Your Horizontal Strategy.

The Top-Down Approach.

The Middle-Out Approach.

The Bottom-Up Approach.

The Vertical Strategy.

Pick a Starting Model.

Pick a Primary Focus.

Start at the Scope Level or the High Level.

Move Over.

The Vertical Strategy with Multiple Workshops.

The Zigzag Strategy.

Comparing the Strategies.

11. Workshop Case Studies.

SalesTrak.

What Worked Well.

Pitfalls and Learning Points.

RegTrak.

What Worked Well.

Pitfalls and Learning Points.

HaveFunds.

What Worked Well.

Pitfalls and Learning Points.

BestClaims.

What Worked Well.

Pitfalls and Learning Points.

12. Moving Forward.

Making the Case to Management.

The Business Value of Requirements Workshops.

Critical Success Factors.

Surfacing Problems.

How to Evaluate Workshops.

What to Report.

Deliverable Data to Capture.

Cost-Benefit Data to Capture.

Happy Sheets.

The Post-Workshop Survey.

Improvement Data.

Regular Workshop Debriefs.

Integrating Workshops into the Requirements Phase.

Becoming a Skilled Requirements Workshop Facilitator.

The IAF.

How Much Must the Facilitator Know?

What Do Business Users Need to Know?

Ground Rules for the Facilitator.

Epilogue.

For More Information.

Appendix: Collaboration Patterns.
Glossary.
Bibliography.
Index

Preface

"What is softest in the world drives what is hardest in the world."
Lao-Tzu

To be successful, software projects need solid requirements and collaborating teams. Problems with requirements are known to be one of the primary causes of software project failure. To make matters worse, the rush to use technologies to collaborate over time and space, or to try to substitute fast development, has resulted in lots of bad software. Many people on both sides—software and business—have complaints about their interrelationships.

Requirements by Collaboration explains a way to meet two essential needs: efficiently defining user requirements while building positive, productive working relationships. Similar structured workshops are called joint requirements, accelerated design, group design, or Joint Application Design or Development (JAD) sessions. They're about getting the requirements accurately, quickly, and collaboratively, through shared vision and clear communications. In the act of this collaboration, relationships are established, mutual understanding is achieved, and trust is built.

Successful workshops don't just happen. Facilitating a requirements workshop is simple, but it's not easy. These workshops require forethought, planning, and design on the part of the workshop facilitator as well as its stakeholders.

This book discusses a technique that's useful for defining the scope of your software project, but it doesn't discuss requirements management. It is not a tutorial on user requirements models, nor does it provide procedures for transforming user requirements into software requirements. WhileI draw from the art and science of facilitation, this book is not a tutorial on facilitation skills and methods. References and information about further reading appear at the end of most chapters to guide your study of these related topics.

I've focused this book on the essential tools for planning and leading requirements workshops. It integrates the various topics of user requirements modeling, including use cases, business rules, and collaborative techniques. This book is a complement to other books on requirements gathering as well as books that deal with software engineering, requirements, and modeling.

This book is practical, not theoretical. It's based on my real-world experiences from a variety of client projects as well as a series of courses that I've written and delivered to clients in a variety of industries. The goals of this book are to provide a focused perspective on user requirements elicitation and to promote techniques that enhance the ongoing relationship between software and business people.

A unique aspect of this book is its discussion of collaboration patterns, reusable collections of group behavior applied to software projects. They extend the idea of "process patterns" (work methods) by exploiting the power of software and customer groups working in tandem to achieve project goals.

Collaboration is basically a continuous feedback loop that enhances both the quality and speed of communication, and thereby the products created in workshops. For this reason, the techniques described in this book use collaboration patterns coupled with clearly defined user requirements documentation and diagrams.

This book is designed to do the following:

Teach you the fundamental principles of designing and facilitating requirements workshops

Provide an overview of the deliverables of these workshops.

Describe possible workshop design strategies.

This book is aimed at anyone participating in initiating, eliciting, analyzing, verifying, validating, or approving requirements for software. The focus is on perspectives ranging from those of project sponsors to analysts, with the goal of providing a common understanding of user requirements from concept through specification. Readers of this book include people who will facilitate requirements workshops; project, product and business managers overseeing the requirements process; and participants in requirements workshops. Project roles would include analyst, project manager, product manager, developer, architect, quality assurance analyst, tester, and requirements engineer.

Like life itself, workshops are often surprising. You plan, and plan you must. But then, things happen when people get together. A workshop, like itself, rarely follows its' original plan because when people get together, things get messy and sloppy; mistakes are made, discussions go off-track, the unexpected occurs. Yet, this is where great things spring forth. With steady guidance from the facilitator, the group can achieve wonders.

Organization of This Book

The body of this book contains 12 chapters within three parts.

Part I, Overview of Requirements Workshops, contains three chapters.

Chapter 1, "We're sorry, your transaction cannot be completed...": How Requirements Workshops Can Help, describes the problems associated with e requirements and the basic concepts of the requirements workshop.

Chapter 2, Workshop Deliverables: Mining Coal, Extracting Diamonds, provides a high-level overview of the various models that are the primary deliverables of a requirements workshop. Each of these models expresses a particular point of view, provides perspective on a certain focus, and achieves a varying level of detail. The chapter also explains how the workshop facilitator selects the most appropriate models for the workshop.

Chapter 3, Ingredients of a Successful Requirements Workshop, describes the elements required to achieve success with a requirements workshop.

Part II, Requirements Workshop Framework, contains six chapters.

Chapter 4, Purpose: E Pluribus Unum (Out of the Many, One), describes how to specify why a given workshop is being held. A concise statement of purpose is the starting point for defining the other elements of a workshop: who, how, what, where and when. Shared purpose is also an essential element for participants to become an effective working group.

Chapter 5, Participants: An Orchestra Is More Than Just Violins, describes the various roles played by workshop attendees, what to do if surrogate or substitute users are going to attend and facilitator neutrality and domain knowledge. The chapter discusses the importance of participation by business subject matter experts, sponsors, and software stakeholders.

Chapter 6, Principles: Rules of Engagement, describes basic ground rules, special ground rules, surfacing hidden agendas, and decision-making ground rules.

Chapter 7, Products: Ending with Beginning, describes how to determine the right level of precision of the workshop's products, perform doneness tests for the product, divide a product across multiple sessions (or multiple products across a single session), and use pre-work and self-assigned post-work.

Chapter 8, Place: Being There, describes "same time, same place" focus, recording modes (including posters and collaborative software tools), and location logistics.

Chapter 9, Process: "Take a Left at the Fourth Light...No, Wait, the Third Light...No...Shirley, what's the Cross Street?" describes the design and flow of workshop activities and how to create an comprehensive agenda to serve as your roadmap. This includes a discussion of how to open and close the workshop, collaborative modes, focus questions, collaboration patterns, sponsor "show and tell," group dynamics, and location logistics.

Part III, Requirements Workshop Design Strategies, contains three chapters.

Chapter 10, Workshop Navigation Strategies: Snorkeling, Scuba Diving, and Skateboarding, describes three roadmaps for structuring requirements workshops: horizontal, vertical, and zigzag.

Chapter 11, Workshop Case Studies: Getting Down and Dirty, illustrates the book's principles and strategies with several case studies drawn from requirements workshops that I've facilitated.

Chapter 12, Moving Forward, describes how to make workshops a best practice, including using data to improve workshops, selling workshops to management, how to integrate workshops into your requirements process, the knowledge and skills needed by subject matter experts and the workshop facilitator, and grou helpful to the facilitator.

The book also includes the following appendices:

A glossary, which contains definitions for all terms introduced in the body of the text

A set of references to books, articles, and Web pages that contain relevant material

A set of collaboration patterns

A complete index