Home » WordPress231 » 2008 » 02 » 05 » If requirements are conversations, who’s talking? :)

If requirements are conversations, who’s talking? :)

Since it appears these requirements gathering and maturation efforts can be seen as conversations, let see who should be involved in these discussions in the first place.

Customers are the ones who have a need. They know what they need to achieve, and they should know what is missing in their current arsenal to achieve their goals. So they should be consulted. Customers themselves should be divided into users and stakeholders. Often their perspectives differ widely, and it is hard to say who would be wrong. Both have points, just different ones. The ones have a deep knowledge of the tactical limitations of the current solutions. The others have a more or less clear picture of where they would like to go.

Developers and designers are the ones who will build the technical solution to address the customers needs. So they should have a say. They usually know the technologies that could be used, and their limitations and constraints. These limitations and constraints are requirements in their own right. They should be included in the debate.

Finally, business people might be the customer in certain situations, or a separate entity in others, trying to get things done, somewhere in between the customers complaints and technologists rants. They have an objective, usually to meet the expectations of the customers within the technical constraints expressed by the developers and designers.

Each of these stakeholders have their own objectives, their own language, their own tools to express the requirements. A quick look at each of them shows a harsh reality: the common ground is slim to non-existent on the objectives and language standpoints, and the overlap in terms of tools limits itself to email and to some extent word and excel, maybe going as far as powerpoint.

As a facilitator of the requirements conversation, this is what you will have to tread with: three types of people with critical goals, different languages, different means of communication, all with busy agenda. Welcome to the New World

Home