Identifying and Confirming User Requirements

Course 315 - 4 Days

You Will Learn How To

• Use a step-by-step user requirements definition methodology
• Conduct effective information-gathering interviews with executives, managers and users
• Translate opportunities/needs into functional goals and requirements
• Profile and understand the users and their environment
• Evaluate workflow & perform gap analysis
• Develop a target requirements document
• Obtain user participation and confirmation
• Conduct a requirements walkthrough

Course Workshop
You apply the techniques in a series of workshops that reinforce the concepts and techniques
presented. Workshops include:
• Preparing an information- gathering plan
• Performing an opportunity assessment
• Profiling the organization
• Interviewing users and managers
• Analyzing the workflow
• Performing gap analysis
• Identifying functional requirements
• Cross-checking the document

Course Benefits
To be successful, delivered products must satisfy the users' requirements. This cannot be possible
unless all requirements are gathered comprehensively and accurately. User requirements are the
foundation of all aspects of a development project, including analysis and design, testing and
delivery. Pragmatic methods are needed to capture the specific user needs and to tie them down
with a clear requirements document.
This course provides proven methods for closing the gap between users and developers, ensuring
that your applications, products and services meet your users' needs and expectations.

Who Should Attend

This course is valuable for developers, analysts, intermediaries, managers, marketers, users and
all those involved in the frontend activities of a project when user requirements are uncovered,
defined, documented and confirmed.
INTRODUCING "METHOD 315" FOR USER REQUIREMENTS
DEFINITION
What the method involves
• A multidimensional view of requirements
• Effective information-gathering
• A focus on user needs and perspectives
• Workflow analysis
• Information requirements documentation
• User involvement in the process

GATHERING INFORMATION
The six stages of information-gathering
• Identify areas of information need
• Create necessary research questions
• Determine source(s) of data
• Research to gather the raw data
• Confirm that the data is correct
• Process data to derive information
Information-gathering methods
• Structured and unstructured interviews
• Telephone surveys
• Focus groups and user groups
• Observing workflow and task sequence
Designing effective questionnaires
• Questionnaire design guidelines
• Quality and response rate issues

INTERVIEWING SKILLS
Step-by-step interviewing techniques
• The five components of an effective information-gathering interview
• Example questions
• Interviewing dos and don'ts
Communicating effectively with users
• How to get appointments
• Guidelines for effective listening

PROFILING THE ORGANIZATION

Opportunity/Needs Assessment
• Opportunity: the point of the project
 • Justification: why customers will buy it
• Scope: the boundaries of the project
• Constraints: resources, time, compatibility
Functional goals
• Establishing functional goals
• The need for metrics
• Examples of functional goals
• Translating functional goals to functional requirements
Organizational requirements
• Organization needs: mission & strategy
• Critical success factors
• Compatibility with existing systems

USER PROFILES AND REQUIREMENTS

Identifying classes of users
• Dedicated vs. discretionary users
• Identifying hidden users
• Recognizing different user orientations, types and styles
User issues affecting the product/service
• Interorganizational issues, hidden agendas
• User preference profiles
• Documenting user information needs
• The relationship between business rules and requirements
Getting user participation
• Who's controlling the project?
• User reps, teams and committees
• Joint application development (JAD)

WORKFLOW ANALYSIS
Modeling the workflow
• Top-down analysis
• Logical modeling
Deriving a scenario
• Undertaking gap analysis
• Building a restructured workflow
• Establishing a new set of user tasks
• Deriving functional requirements
• Documenting scenarios with object- oriented use cases

TARGET REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT

Ingredients of the TRD
• Attributes of a good TRD
• The TRD audiences
• Method 315 outline
• Organizing your own TRD
Screening out unneeded requirements
• Needs vs. wants
• Identifying costly requirements
• Redundant requirements

CONFIRMING THE REQUIREMENTS

Cross-checking the TRD
• Cross-referencing the derived requirements to the research
• Developing traceability matrices to document the mappings
• Identifying conflicts to be resolved
Choosing a development strategy to match user requirements
• Six alternative life cycle strategies for developing a project
• When to use which strategy
Confirmation strategies
• Frontend and iterative strategies
• The requirements walkthrough

GUIDELINES AND HELPFUL HINTS

• Getting financial approval and sign-off
• Change control
• Anticipating change.