The Big Freakin' Requirements Document Must Die. Here's Why.
by Chris Gurney
The typical requirements document is a long, sprawling piece of literature. Within it, one might find a title page, table of contents, change history, complex headers and footers, legalese, confidentiality notices, and, if you're lucky, maybe even requirements.
Its length is probably, primarily due to the fact that it tries to be everything to everybody. But, the problem is that this big freaking document isn't read entirely by any single person, except perhaps by the person who wrote it in the first place.
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| The Big Freakin Requirements Document Must Die Here's Why.pdf | 90.74 KB |
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Replacing the BFRD
Interesting article, but I was a little disappointed when I got to the end and did not find any solutions. I was glad it wasn't a commercial for some new product that solved world hunger, but was hoping for more than a long problem statement that only addressed a subset of the problem - a new tool or set of tools to replace what is (or isn't in some cases) currently done.
Other issues to consider are:
1) Outreach - you'll need a way to spread the word. A professional organization, such as IIBA, might be enlisted
2) Change - You'll have to convince people that it is not just another fad that gets a lot of hype but does not deliver
3) Adoption - you'll have to convince EVERYONE (as in not just BAs) to use (possibly after having to convince them to purchase) the new tools
4) Training - After you convince Accounting to pay for training, you'll have to make sure there are enough trainers to teach practitioners how to effectively use the tools
To be fair, I think the article does a pretty good job of capturing many of the issues related to requirements. I've dealt with enough bureaucracy to know that you can spend more time managing paper than actual work. I definitely feel the pain expressed in the article, but the way I see it there are 3 key factors in successful business analysis:
1) people
2) processes
3) tools
... and you have to have the right people for the processes and tools to be effective. With the wrong people, even the best processes and tools will fail. While I totally agree that some work needs to be done on some of the tools, the tools are still effective when used right; maybe more work needs to be done on the people. Just a thought.