The Jonah Group

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Requirements Analysis

Is this you?

• You are frustrated with the lack of mutual understanding of the requirements for your project, even within your internal team
• Your business stakeholders feel helpless and at the mercy of your build team
• Your build team is frustrated by the changing requirements of the business
• Your projects suffer from scope creep
• Your project has been cancelled after 9 months or more of hard work and expense. again.

The Jonah Group's Requirements Analysis service is the answer to these problems.

What is it?

Requirements Analysis is the process by which the business problems to be solved are discovered and formally documented. Throughout the project, refinement of the requirements continues in parallel with the development of the system.

Before the process has begun, the business stakeholders and system developers often have widely divergent views on business needs. By the same token, business stakeholders may unknowingly maintain unprioritized and conflicting goals. A successful requirements analysis phase repairs this rift by formally defining the system that will be built.

Unfortunately, this is a common area of neglect for many independent service vendors. The chaos that ensues is rarely traced back to its proper origin: a requirements analysis phase incongruous with the size and complexity of the project.

We realize that even though you need a partner to help drive out your requirements, you may have your own development team or another vendor available to implement the system. This is not problematic - the deliverables we produce at the end of requirements analysis describe the formalized, common understanding of the system at that point. As a result, this service can stand on its own, feeding into your independent development plan.

Deliverables

The Jonah Group delivers on its promise of a real software engineering practice by producing the following set of documents at the end of the requirements phase, each of which is evolved and maintained throughout the life of the project. You will receive:

• Version 1.0 of the Requirements Specification, in plain English, organized into a prioritized list of use cases, with 80% of the details in place for the functions assigned to the first iteration.

  This document provides a framework for all further discussion of the system, including the goals for the system, the relative timeliness for delivery of various system functions, the actors (roles) that interact with the system, and of course descriptions of the functions themselves.

  Requirements that are least likely to change usually address key business functions, i.e. ones that deliver the most business value. We use this fact in the assignment of business functions to iterations: in developing the project plan, it makes sense to address the high-value / easy-to-implement functions first, scheduling the lower-value, difficult-to-implement functions for the final iterations.

• Version 1.0 of the Iterative Project Plan, including Gantt chart and estimations for resource usage and total projects cost.

  Software projects of any significant length require an iterative plan to be efficient and successful, and to ensure that some end-to-end functionality is delivered early in the project lifecycle. Fully functional, iterative deployments are the only measurable way to ensure that the functions that have been built really conform to specification. At this stage, the project plan accounts most precisely for functions to be delivered in the first iteration. Within the plan (and the requirements document, above), the highest level of detail for a particular function is achieved just before the build for that iteration begins.

  A project plan based on a proper requirements analysis document and the knowledge of an experienced project manager paves the way for a real estimate of the total cost of the project, allowing you to make a "go/no go" decision before committing to the build.

• Version 1.0 of the Technical Architecture.

  This document contains initial software and network architecture diagrams, and may describe some of the technology constraints imposed by the application's target deployment environment, if known. The document contains a collection of software models, including the context model and preliminary versions of the deployment and object models.

• A prototype, if required.

  Sometimes it is necessary to provide a proof-of-concept for the application being built, especially for technically complex applications. The Jonah Group has experience in developing prototypes that hit the usefulness / timeliness "sweet spot", so that decisions on how to proceed can be made quickly. A prototype phase would be invoked if less expensive paper prototypes or storyboards were deemed insufficient to visualize or prove some important aspect of the system.

Key benefits

• Flexibility. Requirements always change. The software engineering process must accommodate this change in an appropriate manner. An iterative plan that first approaches the functions that are least likely to change (i.e. the high-value, low-cost functions) will be the most adaptable.
• Traceability. We organize items in the project plan by use case to allow direct traceability from the requirements specification. Stakeholders can thus easily rationalize the cost / benefit equation on a per-use-case basis.
• Common Understanding. The process of performing a requirements analysis drives out a common understanding of what the system will do. Business stakeholders are forced to examine and resolve conflicting goals. Providers are forced to understand the business problems for which they will be providing solutions.
• Empowerment. Free of technical jargon, the requirements document can be consulted and understood by anyone on the team. Both the business and the provider enjoy an up-to-date, shared vision and are thereby empowered to build the correct system.

Why Jonah?

The Jonah Group's Requirements Analysis Service is:

• Informed by standards-based software engineering practices such as OMT and RUP
• Independent of your development plan
• Supported by a wealth of practical experience

Armed with the deliverables generated from The Jonah Group's Requirements Analysis service, your development team will be in a much better position to satisfy your business needs.