Curating Business Needs Into Requirements
Change Request, Purpose Unknown
Elements.cloud compiles a list of confessions from people who manage Salesforce in their organization. Confession #1037 comes from a Salesforce administrator, quoting a business person saying, “We’ve decided that we need 10 fields on the account [object] to capture blah blah blah.”
Apparently, “blah blah blah” didn’t mean much because the administrator asked, “What’s the actual requirement? Why do you need them?” The person replied, “Ohh excellent question, because we need 10 fields to store data.” The administrator asked, “But what are you doing with them, what business process do they drive, what purpose do they serve?”
The business person replied, “Stop overcomplicating things, we need fields.”
Perhaps the business person felt he or she didn’t need to justify ten new fields to a Salesforce administrator. The administrator was curating a pop-up need for ten fields on a key object in Salesforce. The business person only told the administrator that he or she needed the fields to “store data.” Not helpful.
What data did the business need to store? How would the data meet the goals they have for Salesforce if any? How would it serve the business goals? The business person had no clear answers to the administrator’s reasonable questions.
Purpose-Driven Clarity
A solution provides value by meeting a business objective. Clear objectives guide valuable solution development. For example, a business sets an objective to retain customers with a convenient online customer service experience. The customer should take as few steps as possible to narrow their issue down. The services would then offer frequently asked questions, along with helpful documents and videos. The customer can escalate their issue to a live specialist anytime.
The solution’s discovery starts with a clear understanding of the business objective - customer retention through convenient online customer service. The solution provides convenience with 24 / 7 access to troubleshooting and useful product information. Customers wanting to talk to a person get the benefit of instant escalation from the online service.
Clear Discovery
Business needs and ideas emerge within a discovery, along with pain points and “nice to have” benefits. A business analyst or architect should curate all of these to determine what will become requirements. The curation process has business value, clarity, and scope as its key standards. For example, he or she could apply the following rules to everything within the solution’s scope:
Get unanimous clarity of business needs.
Determine and agree on what will relieve pain points.
Explore valuable ideas and ideal desires that would improve the solution.
Only capture and acknowledge out of scope needs and ideas, then move on.
Identify “needs” or ideas having little business value and move on.
The needs and pain point relief will become requirements. Ideas deemed valuable by stakeholders will also become requirements. Desirable ideals will either become requirements, or move to a list of long-term features.
Each requirement should clearly relate to the solution’s business objectives. For example, Elements.cloud has a “Required by reason” field in their requirements gathering tool. The field enables its customers to connect a requirement with its business value.
A business analyst or architect should understand the requirements and demonstrate their understanding to the rest of the stakeholders. See Discovery Journey to Understand Requirements for more information.
Two-Way Clarity
If a business doesn't have explicit goals related to a solution, it’s worth clarifying goals to connect the solution to business value. The connection gives the solution purpose, motivating stakeholders with a clear path to the solution’s value.
Business analysts and architects need to sustain clarity throughout the development process. They persuade stakeholders to invest time defining what the business needs by clearly showing the benefits of their participation. When a stakeholder asks, “Why do I need to spend time on this?” a business analyst or architect shows how the solution adds value to the business.
Throughout the development process, business analysts and architects maintain transparency into the development process. They …
… acknowledge each requirement to show the stakeholders they have it correctly.
… show stakeholders their understanding of the requirements, solicit feedback and adjust accordingly.
… collect feedback throughout the development process, curating it into future requirements.
Curating clearly valuable business needs and ideas into requirements results in a solution meeting or exceeding business objectives.