This is a work in progress. . . I am working on this while I print my taxes. Thoughts on the essay in progess?
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The factors driving the people category are typically the most volatile and a seemingly least controllable of the variables within the requirements process. This essay will focus on the ‘people’ category with subsequent assay is focusing on process, environment and solutions.
People have a major impact on the vagaries of requirements. All of the strengths and weaknesses that individuals and groups bring to the table will influence the final product, the requirements. There are numerous definitions of ‘requirements’ however in the final view of what the functionality developed by the project should do. A few of the more problematic contributors to requirements variance are:
1. Lack of experience
2. Human nature
3. Communication
4. Organizational politics
Two types of experience are germane to this discussion of the requirements development process. The first is knowledge of the problem space from a business perspective. Without knowledge of the problem space, the requirements developed may not practically address what the project should do. Knowledge and experience with the problem space is critical for effectiveness there fore many techniques to manage this risk have been developed. One technique that has been developed to ensure problem space knowledge is to ensure access to the business partner. This level of access is a central tenet of the most of the agile methods is to keep knowledge and experience close at hand. The second category of experience is experience with the requirements process itself. Without experience gathering, recording and managing the requirements process the information gathered is apt to be more costly than necessary and less valuable than needed. Agile methods use coaching to reinforce this knowledge and experience while other methods use training and processes. The goal is the same in either case, efficiency and effectiveness.
