Melissa ScottBusiness Project Manager for Product Supply| BayerO'Fallon, Mo, United States
Do any PM's have any tips/advice for how to effectively conduct requirements gathering workshop with Global Teams 100% remote? Any digital technology tools that have been helpful? My project group has been told that we cannot travel to do our workshops, so we are exploring other ways to do this remote with other countries. Saving Changes...
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George FreemanThought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States
Hi Melissa,
I have accomplished this with:
- Room Video (with remote control panning and zooming)
- Virtual Whiteboarding
- Traditional PowerPoint stacks
It’s helpful to keep the Video and Virtual Presentation portions on separate channels, i.e., separate devices (large screen for video and projector for virtual presentation). As long as everyone understands the ground rules and has patience it can work out quite well. Saving Changes...
Use a story mapping online solution (e.g. Cardboard, StoriesOnBoard) to go from Vision to Themes to Epics & Stories... Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I am working in this type of environments from last 25 years. We use skype for business as our collaboration tool. It works fine for me. Remember that you will not gather requirements. You will elicit needs/wants/desires/etc that you will translate into requirements. And PM is accountable for project requirements where project requirements are defined from product requirements. I am saying that just in case you decide to use additional tools for that. For example we use Caliber/RM. Saving Changes...
Although I don't know what kind of projects you are working, at a company like Bayer there are often a significant amount of regulatory requirements and internal requirements, so I will disagree with Sergio somewhat on not gathering requirements.
I often use Visio as my virtual whiteboard, especially when I am creating an indentured tree/hierarchy of requirements.. PowerPoint works to a degree but is not as good when you're moving things around, and when you run out of room on a Visio page, it extends the page area.
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Aug 29, 2019 5:36 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Hi @Keith.I understood that the post was created for asking about interation with stakeholders in remote environments. When you interact with stakeholders you get needs/wants/desires/etc that have to be translated into requirements. For example the need to fullfil a regulation will guide you to the regulation. Just in case you use other method and you go directly to the regulation then I can agree that you are facing the requirement directly.
Saving Changes...
James GaskinsManager| US House of RepresentativesUpper Marlboro, Md, United States
We have been replacing Microsoft Skype with Teams for collaboration and have been getting better adoption from the key staff involved in projects and key initiatives. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
I like to approach this systematically because it is important to use the time you have productively when working remote. So when I do actively engage remote stakeholders it can be done running instead of wasting time cutting through useless info.
In this type of scenario, a questionnaire is a great tool. It allows stakeholders the time to think and respond. I would then disseminate the responses and use it to structure video sessions or even follow up questionnaires. Skype and Zoom are great tools for VC. I like the ease of using sharing, recording and annotating in Zoom. When eliciting requirements (we all know what you mean by that;) ) the ability to share and annotate is very important so select a tool that you are comfortable using these function in. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Aug 28, 2019 8:13 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
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Although I don't know what kind of projects you are working, at a company like Bayer there are often a significant amount of regulatory requirements and internal requirements, so I will disagree with Sergio somewhat on not gathering requirements.
I often use Visio as my virtual whiteboard, especially when I am creating an indentured tree/hierarchy of requirements.. PowerPoint works to a degree but is not as good when you're moving things around, and when you run out of room on a Visio page, it extends the page area.
Hi @Keith.I understood that the post was created for asking about interation with stakeholders in remote environments. When you interact with stakeholders you get needs/wants/desires/etc that have to be translated into requirements. For example the need to fullfil a regulation will guide you to the regulation. Just in case you use other method and you go directly to the regulation then I can agree that you are facing the requirement directly. Saving Changes...
Sergio, I agree with what you are saying, and we are probably using different words to describe some of the same things.
When I run workshops in a heavily regulated industry, some of the stakeholders are the SMEs who are responsible to show compliance to the regulations. I will try to have them prepare for the workshop in advance by gathering the relevant requirements whether external or internal, based on what we already know about the project.
We will certainly elicit, derive, etc. other requirements through discussions with the larger group of stakeholders, but the baseline requirements set serves as a valuable background to the larger discussion. A stakeholder may desire to do something that invokes a requirement which is very difficult and expensive to meet and verify. That can steer the project deliverables themselves, which in turn drives the full requirements set.
In that sense, I will first gather the established requirements from the SMEs, align them to the relevant project aspects on the virtual whiteboard, and proceed with the discussions from there. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
The hardest part of a video-conference is trying to get a sense of kinship amongst the group. (I remember attending a two-hour meeting between two locations. It took me about half the meeting before I felt a sense of belonging to the total group, rather than just my co-located companions.)
I suggest that you have team-building exercises and games to build the trust and relationships to make it truly effective. Saving Changes...
