In this episode, author and consultant Alyce Reopelle challenges some of the practices and assumptions about requirements elicitation.
After listening to this episode, you'll understand:
- Why a subject matter expert may not be the best person to elicit requirements
- The impact of assumptions and how to avoid them
- How to overcome the curse of knowledge
SHOW NOTES
A tactic that organizations often use is to assign a subject matter expert (SME) to elicit requirements for a project. This approach makes sense as a SME will understand the systems and processes impacted by the project and will likely discover and refine the requirements faster.
But what is this conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the best person to elicit requirements is someone who knows nothing about the current state or the processes and products?
The reality is that experts often make assumptions and fail to ask crucial questions. They enter a situation with an expert’s mind; a scenario in which there are few options for a solution. Instead, we need to have a beginner’s mind. With a beginner’s mind, the options are unbound by preconceived notions. We are free to ask insightful questions and imagine new possibilities.
Listen to the full episode to find out how to approach situations with a beginner’s mind and fight some of the assumptions that lead to gaps in requirements.
YOUR HOMEWORK
Watch our for and avoid words that describe requirements but can’t be tested. When you hear words such as fast, user friendly, or big, challenge stakeholders to quantify what they mean and get a clear understanding of the need.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Alyce’s article, Perfecting the Art of Better Business Requirements
- More articles by Alyce Reopelle
Alyce Reopelle
Author and Consultant
Alyce is a PMP certified consultant and contributing author for Project Management for Today. She has over 20 years of project management experience with a passion for helping organizations grow their PMO, their project managers, and their teams.
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I agree with the key point called-out in the episode summary relative to the risk of SME as Business Analyst. Good point, and I admit I’ve fallen into that trap in my past. Good reminders too relative to the importance of maximizing cross-functional/inclusive stakeholder participation in a live session, and in drawing out and making assumptions explicit.
Where I was feeling less comfortable was with what sounded like feature-set elicitation (as in the “how big is big?” example)—contrast to customer/user journey mapping, problems to be solved, desired outcomes (contrast to outputs), and ‘user stories’ framing of elicitation.
Regardless (perhaps my discomfort was unwarranted?), I am interested in knowing from your experience to what extent are “traditional” (not digital native) companies embracing these more agile constructs in requirements gathering, compared to a list of features/functionality framing that has been the historical norm? What are you seeing within mainstream companies recently? Thanks.
Great podcast, thank you.