Discovery Journey to Understand Requirements
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Software development success depends on understanding the client's business needs. The discovery journey clarifies stakeholders’ understanding of requirements. The key to a successful discovery comes down to one word - motivation. The discovery leader - a business analyst or architect - needs motivation to overcome the challenges and obstacles during the journey. The leader motivates the rest of the stakeholders to agree on a clear vision of requirements.
Motivated Discovery
Before embarking on the discovery journey, the leader develops curiosity about the client’s business, goals, and objectives they expect the software solution to meet. The leader pays close attention to what business stakeholders say. Even though the customer may not always be right, they still have a point - and they should not need to repeat it. The discovery leader always respects stakeholders at any level. His or her interest in the business goals and achieving them with the solution earns the other stakeholders’ respect and appreciation. As the discovery leader learns more about the intended solution’s goals and aligns stakeholders to the requirements of meeting the goal, they develop trust in the leader.
Discovery Journey
The discovery leader applies his or her curiosity and attentiveness to capture what the client needs from the intended solution. The leader acknowledges each need back to the stakeholders to confirm he/she has it, whether it becomes part of the solution or not. The discovery leader makes every effort to understand the requirements, as shown in the next section. He/she follows up with stakeholders to reinforce and clarify his/her understanding. The leader shows his/her understanding of the requirements and edits documents to reflect stakeholder feedback.
Understanding Requirements
The discovery journey starts with the leader learning terms specific to the client’s business and defining them in a shared glossary. The discovery leader verifies the terms and their relationship to each other with a concept map. As the leader learns about the client’s business processes, he/she illustrates them for the stakeholders with a process map. The discovery leader writes user stories specifying a user's role, what the user needs from the solution, and why. The leader also writes use cases for interactions with several steps or decisions. The leader follows up with stakeholders with questions about these documents. Once the technical stakeholders have a clear and complete understanding of the requirements, they can begin developing a solution that meets those requirements.