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MANAGING YOUR TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS
Imagine that you’re a 6’ 10” pro basketball player who’s shopping for a new car. Those long legs are your bread and butter, so you value legroom above all other features in a vehicle. You earn a ridiculous NBA salary, so you can easily afford a V8 engine, sunroof, satellite radio, GPS and other extras. But because you’re single and childless, you could care less about childproof doors or backseat passenger space. A savvy shopper who likes to bargain, you draw up a prioritized list of your requirements and carefully evaluate the latest models before choosing the vehicle that best meets your needs.
Organizations looking to purchase new technology systems have specialized requirements far more complex than our fictitious Mr. Basketball’s, yet many fail to define and prioritize them in the same intelligent manner. According to NYSTEC Senior Engineer Paul Franz, requirements are essential to any technology acquisition.
“More often than not, poorly specified requirements result in poor RFPs, which result in bad purchases, cost overruns, or total project failures,” said Franz. “Most organizations know they need to define and manage their requirements before they acquire new technology. The problem is some organizations aren’t sure how to begin the process, while others don’t know how to manage it. Still others document their requirements using standard tools such as Microsoft Word or Excel, not realizing the benefits of software specially designed for requirements management.”
Requirements can be defined as the necessary functional features of any product that you’re looking to buy. In the case of technology acquisitions, requirements can also include expectations with regard to vendor service, training and maintenance.
“Organizations often have hundreds of features that they want or expect from a new technology system,” said Franz. “A typical organization has hundreds of employees, each with different needs from any new technology. The project manager must adopt a systematic way to capture, organize and prioritize all of those requirements.”
Requirements management is the process of identifying, organizing, documenting and tracking changes to requirements. By engaging in this process, the project team establishes a common understanding among all interested parties regarding the purpose and function of the new technology.
To help clients generate their technical requirements, NYSTEC uses a software tool called DOORS. Made by Telelogic, DOORS stands for Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System. DOORS helps project managers make and monitor changes to project requirements. In addition, the software helps to keep all phases of the project – including work plans, work products and activities – consistent with requirements.
“When you generate requirements with DOORS, each requirement is assigned a unique identifier (an auto-generated number),” explained NYSTEC quality specialist Angie Musa. “That number never changes, even if you delete a requirement or alter its wording. DOORS allows you to categorize requirements in any hierarchy you choose. For instance, you can put all training requirements under ‘Training’ or all interface requirements under ‘User Interface.’ DOORS also allows you to categorize requirements by defining attributes. Attributes include additional information about requirements that helps to query and filter them. You can also track requirements relationships by linking them to other requirements or to source documents. For example, most government agencies have technology requirements that are subject to state laws and regulations. With DOORS we can link each requirement to specific statutes that apply.”
In addition, DOORS enables project teams to access all project requirements over the network. Managers can easily view a history of changes made to each requirement, including the names of people responsible for the changes. Plus, they can easily export requirements and source materials from DOORS to Microsoft Word.
“The ability to identify changes to requirements helps you to better assess the impact of those changes,” said Franz. “For example, as laws and regulations change, the requirements-management tool allows you to identify the impact those regulatory changes will have on your requirements, so you can plan your project accordingly.”
Both Franz and Musa praise DOORS as an invaluable tool for managing and tracking requirements. Other tools are available besides DOORS, including IBM’s Requisite Pro, 3SL’s Cradle and Starbase Corporation’s Caliber. Having a good tool is important, but instituting a proven approach to requirements management is even more important.
“Regardless of the tool, the process of defining and refining requirements still demands a lot of sweat and toil,” said Franz. “At NYSTEC we organize client workgroups made up of subject matter experts who write, examine and edit all requirements. Most requirements are derived from the organization’s existing documents, including business process documents, laws and regulations. When you’re defining requirements, you need input from every type of end user in the organization from support to maintenance. You also need to hear from your financial, auditing and security people, not just the folks who will use the technology regularly.”
Each requirement must be carefully considered before it’s included in the RFP.
“Adding requirements takes time and dollars,” explained Franz. “Some requirements are necessary, but others might be too expensive or too difficult to achieve given the time constraints of the project. Part of requirements management is interfacing with people, and part of it is organizing and tracking all of your information. DOORS helps with this second piece.”
According to Musa, each requirement should consist of a simple “shall statement.” For instance, a typical requirement might read as follows: “The system shall alert the next user when an assignment is completed.”
“Some organizations use the acronym SMART to guide them with requirements,” said Musa. “SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented and Time-bound. At NYSTEC, we say that each requirement should be feasible, clear, concise, testable and traceable. We feel that traceability is important because it helps you to understand how a change to one requirement might impact others. It also helps you to determine if your requirements are complete.”
Like our basketball star who’s also a smart consumer, organizations must become smart technology buyers by carefully managing their requirements. NYSTEC can help make your technology acquisition a slam dunk by instituting its proven process for requirements preparation, definition and management.
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