What Matters When Defining Requirements?
Categories:
Requirements Management
Categories: Requirements Management
| Situation: You want to give your approach to requirements a little more thought. Is requirements definition your biggest challenge when defining success on your project? Or is that that one concern among many? JAMA software and Raven flow are conducting a survey related to requirements gathering that you may be interested in. At the very least, its a quick way to give some thought to what matters to you relative to requirements gathering. Here are some early results from John Simpson of JAMA ... Respondents are: 37% are Analysts, 24% Project Managers, 12% Product Development/Engineering, 6% Product Managers, 5% Exec Mngt 54% of respondents work for companies with $100 million annual revenue or more (25% are $1 billion +) so a good range of large and small companies The biggest requirements challenges were: 70% gaining a clear understanding of what our customers want 64% ensuring what’s being built is what was planned 63% documenting all the requirements The goals of their projects: 75% are for enhancing existing products 59% bringing new products to market 25% reducing costs of producing existing products 29% of them considered their companies “Risk Takers” when it comes to innovation, the largest camp was “Market Readers” at 36%, 16% were the “Low Cost Provider” 73% rely on customers and partners for new product ideas – so external collaboration is critical In terms of complexity, 39% of respondents on average had 500+ requirements for typical project, 22% have 1,000 or more requirements In terms of the burden of change management, over a third of respondents spend 25% or more of their time dealing with changes to requirements How they measure success: 87% customer satisfaction 52% quality/safety ratings 34% cost savings 32% revenue 25% speed to market (interesting in terms of positioning) And the one they personally cared the most about was “customer satisfaction” at 61% – I thought it was interesting that “revenue” wasn’t higher (it was only 6%) In terms of delivering projects on time and on budget: For over half of respondents, the project success rate is 40% or less; so they’re feeling the requirements pain The top reasons were: 74% scope creep 64% missed or poorly defined requirements 61% unrealistic schedules or expectations 51% team communication/collaboration an issue 44% Misunderstanding of what customers want 39% Issues w/ change management 29% Lack of executive support What they personally find most frustrating: Missed or poorly defined requirements was #1, unrealistic schedules #2, misunderstanding of the customer #3 The majority define “collaboration” as these 3 things: everyone is in sync on the latest version of the requirements(80%), all items in centralized place (72%), everyone has access (66%) No surprise, 80% currently use Word or Excel to define and communicate requirements; 31% currently use requirements definition software, 35% use a requirement management software, 40% using email On the list of tools they’d like to use in 2008 – 59% chose requirements modeling & visualization, 62% requirements collaboration & management In terms of processes: 37% are using a mix (so having tools built to handle various processes is probably a good thing) 26% traditional Waterfall 16% using RUP or some variation of it And despite all the attention around Agile these days, only 5% answered using some flavor of Agile process currently – was a bit surprise Agile wasn’t higher |
Posted on: April 16, 2008 10:34 PM
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The Truth... well, ouch.
Categories:
Time Killers
Categories: Time Killers
| Situation: You could use a laugh. Here's a gantthead-appropriate quip from my favorite e-card site someecards.  |
Posted on: April 16, 2008 09:50 PM
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Questions - Selecting and Enrolling a Sponsor
Categories:
Management Approaches
Categories: Management Approaches
| Situation: You could use some help selecting and enrolling a sponsor for your project. I really believe that managing well is often less about knowing what to do than knowing what questions to ask. The answers to those questions get you really familiar with the project and the environment you are in - allowing you to adjust your approach to the specific situation. That's why, as a part of our PM process Project HEADWAY, we include a set of questions for each task. I thought that exposing them, task by task, to all of you would make for an interesting series of blog postings. I'd love to get your feedback on whether these are the right ones for Enrolling Sponsors. To identify a sponsor, think about the following questions:
Ask your sponsor or a trusted colleague the same questions. |
Posted on: April 13, 2008 09:18 AM
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A Faster Way to Schedule Meetings via Outlook?
Situation: You spend too much time scheduling meetings. Some people set aside blocks of time for catching up on email, phone calls, or some other endless ongoing task. Meetings can be that way too - and just the scheduling of them can take an incredible amount of time. There are many schools of thought on how to send a meeting request. Some say you send a specific time through Outlook and have that back and forth trying to find a time that works for both parties. Others say you should offer 3 different times over two days, offering both both morning and afternoon options in email - then send the outlook request. Outlook also allows you to share your availability with others with or without letting them know what you are "busy" doing.Jiffle gives you yet another Outlook-integrated option thats sort of a mix of everything I've described above. With this tool you: - pick time blocks that you want to leave open for meetings - share those meeting time blocks with the people you need to meet with - they select a time block when you send them a meeting request. - you get an outlook confirmation. Up to 10 meeting confirmations per month are offered as a free service. There are quite a few of these web 2.0 scheduling services out there. Timebridge is another that might be better for large groups. Everyone offers their availability, then people "vote" on which time to select. |
Posted on: April 13, 2008 08:15 AM
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Finding the Right People - an Impossible Task?
Situation: You need to staff up again, but are dreading the whole interview process... We go through it here at gantthead fairly frequently. We need more people, go through a fairly frustrating process of hopeful anticipation (after a successful resume review and screening), mild disappointment (post interviews), confusion (picking between multiple candidates, none of whom seem perfect), then finger crossing (hoping the choice we made was the right one). We have a fantastic team here - the best. However, we only get it right half of the time when we try to add to it.We've gotten better at interviewing, but I wonder if its ever possible to really uncover what's real in the process. I thought about this when reading How to Catch a Liar on Forbes.com. I really liked this article BTW, which gives you a top ten list in pictures - things that go way beyond blink rates to the "Tricky Tilt" or "Heavy Hands". At any rate, one of the recommendations in the article, was to look at the Reid Technique for interviewing which seems like it would be a fun way to spend a day. A lot of what they do is grounded in police-style interrogations, so maybe I could learn to interview like Stabler on Law & Order SVU. I personally like to ask for examples a lot. "Tell us about a time when you... [insert desired behavior here]" I also like to ask people things like, "What is the one thing you are most proud of doing over the entire course of your career?" or "Tell us about a time when you were particularly creative in developing a solution to a problem - or just creative in general." Maybe I just like to hear stories more than most people. I know its important to me that the person being interviewed does most of the talking. What are your favorite interview questions and why do they work? |
Posted on: April 09, 2008 10:35 AM
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