Quality in Requirements - Get It Right The First Time

 

Ever wonder about that ephemeral word quality while elicting and documenting requirements on your projects? How can you plan for quality and reduce re-work, especially if you are an Information Technology professional whose products cannot even be seen or maybe even conceptualized until they have already been produced?  Of course, you will use illictation methods and models to show your clients what you understand to be their requirements, but what about the production of the deliverables, the fruits of your labour?

Well, the old adage "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail" applies here just as it does in any of the ten knowledge areas PMI defines for all projects. Yes - believe it or not - quality doesn't just happen. And quality does not equal perfect, otherwise every project would go on forever, just like that children's song "This is the song that never ends." :)

So - how can you plan for quality? Well, for a start, you can tell your project sponsor and stakeholders how you plan to meet the requirements they have laid out for you, starting with identifying the deliverables you will produce as defined when you broke the work down into an understandable structure (look up "work breakdown structure".)

Engage your team and stakeholders in describing each deliverable before you start producing it. Identify who is going to produce each (probably team members) and who is going to review and sign off on each (probably clients). Seek their input, agreement and sign off of a "deliverable expectation document". Use this subsequently when the deliverable has been produced and the review is occurring.

Assure quality - build it right the first time, but control quality too - check that it was, indeed, built right the first time.

How do you assure quality? Standards, best practices, templates, examples, expert advice, lessons learned, past experiences, involving the right people, measuring - all these and more go into assuring quality.

How do you control quality? Review by subject matter experts, carefully planned testing, dreaded re-work (made unnecessary, of course, by your excellent quality assurance processes).

Remember - you can't test quality in, so pay a great deal of attention to quality planning and assurance.

There... now that is simple, isn't it? Can you get it right the first time? Well - probably not always, but it is sure worth the try, don't you think?

Now, if I could just get the cursed song out of my head... this is the song that never ends... it just goes on and on my friends... some people started ... help!