Technique: Understand the 80-20 Rule
It is a well-established fact that BAs spend 20% of their time eliciting 80% of the requirements. The other 80% of analysis time is spent gathering 20% of the requirements. This occurs because the majority of requirements (roughly 80%) are fairly straightforward and can be elicited fairly quickly. An experienced BA can interview business stakeholders briefly and immediately begin to understand the high-level requirements. An analyst can quickly get the “big picture” and then fill in all of the details. Some of these details will also be straightforward and fairly easy to document. Then there are the rest of the requirements. Every business area has at least a few processes, business rules, or data needs that are very complex and difficult to understand. These may be the 20% that take the most time to find and are the most important because they are complex. Try to determine whether the most important requirements are in the 80% (straightforward) or the 20% (complex). The difficulty and complexity may be related to industry specifics or they may result from a business area where policies and procedures have never been clearly articulated.
The most important (highest priority) requirements should be elicited as early as possible. Be careful not to become preoccupied with complex unimportant requirements. These requirements are often concerned with business transactions or situations that rarely occur and require human intervention. Don’t spend time designing a sophisticated piece of software for an infrequent business need. A BA can easily spend 80% or more of requirements elicitation and analysis time on these complex areas of the business.
Technique: Timeboxing
A useful technique for analysis is timeboxing. Timeboxing acknowledges that some types of tasks are difficult to finish because the end state of the deliverable is subjective (e.g., is a screen design ever “right”?). This technique is used in software development when the time frame is set and the deliverable is negotiable. Timeboxing gives the worker a specific amount of time within which to complete a given task. The task must be completed by the specified date and time, with the goal of getting as much done as possible in the allotted time. Timeboxing is difficult because it forces the analyst to prioritize the most important work first. If time allows, lower priority items can be addressed. Timeboxing is valuable for people who tend to be perfectionists and tend to overcommit.
Imagine you have been assigned a small project for which you need to write a complete requirements document by a specific date and there are four high-level business requirements. The tendency would be to take one high-level requirement at a time, elicit the detailed needs, and prepare the requirements document. Using this approach, the time allocated might be used up on the first two high-level requirements. Timeboxing would recommend that you initially spend some time on each requirement to learn a little about it, its priority, and its risks. By working on each requirement for a short period of time and then moving on to the next one, you will get an overall view of the deliverables requested and be able to determine how much can be done in the time available. Talk with your project manager and sponsor frequently to provide a status update and confirm your plans for utilization of the time.
If all four requirements are needed, break the total time available into four time slots and get as much done as you can on each. Acknowledge that you may not be able to completely detail everything and your requirements package may not be a professional-quality deliverable. Keep track of risks and outstanding questions as you go along. At the end of your timebox, you will have an overall understanding of each requirement and at least a rough requirements deliverable. You will also have a list of risks and outstanding questions.
These risks and outstanding questions should be reported to the project manager and sponsor. They need to decide if more time should be allocated to resolve these items or if they are willing to accept the risks and move forward. Timeboxing must include risk assessment because, by its very nature, the technique acknowledges that the work will be rushed or squeezed into a smaller than ideal time frame. Analysts must be able to best utilize this time and report the risks of the shortened schedule.
Timeboxing is a great technique when the deliverable is a written document like a requirements package or training manual. Writers can edit and rewrite over and over again, never getting the sentences perfect. But most documents used internally in organizations don’t need to be perfect—they need to communicate the important messages to their audience.