Requirements Discovery Guides
Welcome to a New Domain
A business analyst stepped out of her comfort zone to elicit requirements in a new domain - customer service. She had developed confidence from delivering requirements for sales and marketing solutions. She understands the high-level customer service goals and has learned their terminology and some processes from observing their team in action.
The business analyst wonders how to make the deep dive into specific customer service needs. What should she ask customer service stakeholders to cover all their needs?
More Than a Checklist
Bridging the Gap offers a “Support Customers” requirements checklist to help the business analyst with her first customer service project. Laura Brandenburg, Bridging the Gap’s Founder and CEO, went through the checklist at a Fall 2021 SFBA Summit session, “Asking the Right Questions for Requirements.”
Bridging the Gap’s checklist has more than a list of common questions to ask stakeholders. It contains the following sections:
Feature Overview
Analysis Tip
Common Applications
Business Benefits
Key Concepts
Requirements Questions
The Most Important Thing
The first three sections introduce the subject matter, with “Common Applications” providing real examples of companies using the feature. Next, the “Business Benefits” section offers reasons why a project would be valuable to an organization. Laura pointed out that management may have different reasons for needing a solution than those listed in Business Benefits.
Next, the business analyst should determine what management stakeholders expect from a solution. Sections 4 through 6 offer examples of common benefits, concepts, and questions. It’s up to business analysts to adapt them to their projects. Finally, “The Most Important Thing” returns to what makes the feature valuable.
From Checklist to Guidebook
How would the requirements checklist help the business analyst with her first customer discovery? By using it more as a guidebook than a checklist. First, she should confirm what benefits the organization expects from the customer service solution. For example, she can explore the role the solution would play in achieving their customer service goals.
Then, she would create a glossary of the organization’s customer service concepts. If she wants to confirm her understanding of the concepts and their relationships, she could draw a concept map and present it to the stakeholders.
As the business analyst examines the Requirements Questions, she selects only those that apply to her project. She intends to start stakeholder conversations with the questions, where she’ll drill down to their specific needs. She realizes that the list of questions does not cover all of the organization’s needs and adds relevant questions to her list. The business analyst should organize the questions to best use stakeholder time in interviews and meetings. She would use the organization’s customer service terminology in her questions, avoiding technical jargon.
The Most Important Thing
The “Asking the Right Questions for Requirements” session started with a discussion about preventing missed requirements. A requirements checklist can help with that, especially in a new domain. In addition, the Requirements Questions section can reveal good questions overlooked by all stakeholders, including the business analyst. At a minimum, it can give a business analyst good ideas about questions to ask.
It’s up to business analysts to select the “right” stakeholder questions, those that connect to the most important thing - the organization’s needs and goals. Bridging Requirements Gaps covers this in more detail.
Business analysts can use requirements checklists as discovery guidebooks to close requirements gaps, prompt new questions, and even reveal undiscovered needs.
The “Asking the Right Questions for Requirements with Laura Brandenburg” video is available with an all-access pass to the Fall 2021 SFBA Summit.