How to gather requirements to start a project?
This is an important first step to gather all information in order to define what is expected outcome of the project.
Duration
Complexity
Contributors
Project manager, Product manager, Design manager, UX designer
Getting Started
Before starting a project, it is essential to have the requirements in place that include what the users want from your project.
Why?
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To know sufficient about what is expected from a project.
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To meet user expectations.
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To deliver complete solutions.
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To have a clear project brief that enables the team to start working on the project.
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To discover and understand what is required from the project.
Requirement gathering is done by getting information from stakeholders as well as by conducting research activities based on the project's needs.
Research
Different research activities conducted to gather data are:
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Stakeholder Interviews
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Desk research or secondary research
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Workshops and brainstorming sessions
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Observation methods like ‘shadowing’
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Audit an existing or competitor products
Synthesis
Once the data is collected, it needs to be formulated into requirements. Most often the data is unstructured or in various different formats and to make sense of it, different methods are used.
A few of the most popular methods are:
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Affinity Maps: To identify groups of information and thus themes emerge from a sundry list of pointers or notes. The themes can be related to product features and user stories leading to requirements creation.
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Value Proposition Canvas
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User Journey Maps: To understand the overall experience and identify the gaps, which translate to requirements.
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Empathy Maps: To understand target users in a specific context in order to identify their pain points and concerns. These pain points can translate into requirements.
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Ecosystem Maps: This map shows the relationship between different roles and the reasons for interacting with each other. This makes it easy to identify the missing links in an ecosystem.
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Mind Maps: Used for structuring hierarchical data, these could be the groups of information within the product. It helps identify if any important group info is missing.
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Task flow Analysis
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User Stories
These data visualization methods help in making sense of data and understanding the expected product behavior. It becomes possible to identify gaps or requirements needed to create the desired product.
Formulating Requirements
Pointers collected from data synthesis of research data are translated into requirements by using methods like Value Proposition Canvas.
Prioritizing
Prioritizing requirements is done with different methods like the Feature-Value Matrix, Eisenhower Matrix, etc.
The scope of the project should be kept in mind while gathering requirements. This should prevent probable scope creep or gradual pile-up of unnecessary requirements while the project is in progress.
How to?
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Identify the stakeholders from whom details can be gathered.
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Gather data using various methods:
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Preparatory research
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Stakeholder interviews
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Data Analytics
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Bugs/ error reports from past versions, if any
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Define and formulate requirements from the gathered data. In order to ensure comprehension, requirements can be grouped under phases. Each requirement must be actionable and measurable. Each requirement has definite acceptance criteria.
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Prioritize: Before completing the requirements gathering, prioritize all of them with participation from relevant stakeholders.
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Finalize: Review the requirements with stakeholders as well as team members. Incorporate any received feedback, revise, and finalize the requirements.
Do’s & Don'ts
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Do’s |
Don’ts |
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1. Be specific 2. Ensure comprehension so that nothing is missed out. 3. Prevent scope creep during the project. 4. Clearly prioritize the requirements. |
1. Don’t have conflicting requirements. 3. Don’t be vague about the priorities of the requirements. 4. Don’t include requirements that are beyond the project scope. |
Suggested Tools
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Jira
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GoogleDocs
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GoogleSheets
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Office365
Templates
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Customer Journey Map Template from Miro
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Customer journey map template from Mural
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Free Project Requirement Templates and Documents from Smartsheet
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Project Requirements Gathering Process and Templates from Coda
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Template Requirements Gathering from SalesForce
References
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A 6-step guide to requirements gathering for project success from Asana
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What You Need To Know About Requirements Gathering from Wrike
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Requirements Gathering – How We Solve The Biggest Problems With Consulting from nmg blog
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Ecosystem maps from IxDF
Other Related Best Practices
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Project Scoping
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Project Planning