Project Management

Archdale, NC, North Carolina, Construction Project Management Software

Project Requirements Analysis

You are about to embark on a large IT project. Perhaps you will consider engaging a consultant to assist in some or all of the many aspects of this effort. Do you realize this early stage is vital to the ultimate success of your system?

Getting the Work Done

You need a requirements specification to manage a n IT system project. A thorough requirements analysis is a prerequisite to a proper specification. You may require substantial time and effort may to analyze, understand, and specify a large IT system.

On smaller projects, it may be possible to incorporate the cost of the analysis services into the total cost of the project. However, should you decide to implement the system in-house, or award the implementation to a company other than the one performing the analysis, you may end up gaining valuable insight without having arranged to pay the consultant for the work performed. You will find it simpler to pay for this work as it is performed. Larger projects, requiring a substantial investment of consulting time, cannot feasibly be done prior to entering into a consulting engagement.

A Partnership

Your IT project management expert often deals with many different industries. You know best how your business works. Your employees know the barriers to their becoming more productive. Your consultant has expertise is in orchestrating complex activities to deliver an appropriate IT solution. Together, you and your consultant can succeed.

Caution

Beware of the following misconceptions:

• We don't have the budget for requirements analysis
• Requirements analysis is part of the bid proposal; we don't want to pay for a proposal
• You're the expert; you should already know what we need
• We do not have the time for analysis, we must go live next month
• You cannot possibly learn my business fast enough to do a requirements analysis

Beliefs such as those above can doom an IT project. Requirements analysis is critical to any complex software system. You need a trained expert, experienced in uncovering requirements for IT systems. Inadequate early planning is the most frequent source of problems with large IT projects.

Constantly Incorporate Feedback

Requirements analysis is often not a one-pass operation. You will obtain the best results when you incorporate the information you gather during subsequent activities. For example, after the initial round of discovery, prepare a preliminary specification, and meet with the project stakeholders to review it. Most likely, changes will occur. You should not resist changes at this early stage; they become far more costly to make later in the project development cycle. Repeat this process until the stakeholders are satisfied with the specification.

Length of Requirements Analysis

A good rule of thumb is to allocate 15 to 20 percent of total project time or budget toward the analysis phase. For example, if you expect to have a $50,000 (in labor cost), three-man-month project, you should expect to use $7,500 to $10,000 over about half a man-month in discovering, documenting, and estimating the project. Otherwise you may end up with a far larger project than you intended!

Obtain Diverse Views

Too often, only the loudest voices are heard, leaving important requirements undiscovered until late in the development cycle. By then, changes are either too costly to implement, or will be shoe-horned into a less-than-ideal system for those requirements. During the crucial requirements analysis phase, Productive Technology's IT project management consultant typically interviews all project stakeholders. Also helpful is talking with a sample of the line-of-business users affected by the software system being analyzed.

Know and Communicate Expectations

Your project management consultant should have experience discovering, communicating, and managing the expectations of those involved with the project. If a certain feature is too costly to implement, those who count on that feature must know the facts, so they can campaign for the feature and the additional funding it needs in a timely manner. Users should be fully informed so they will not blame the IT team for failing to include the feature.

A Living Document

Throughout the life of an IT project, business conditions can change. New requirements are learned, and project course corrections are to be expected. A competent project manager will design your system requirements with change in mind. As they occur, potential changes are evaluated, the impact assessed, and project costs and deliverables adjusted. Be sure your project manager understands this process, and can react appropriately to changes as the occur.

Consulting Help is Available

Remember to get help if you need it. While seemingly economical to perform the requirements analysis in-house, be sure the staff responsible have the appropriate skills and experience to adequately perform the tasks, which are among the most demanding and highly-skilled aspects of an IT project. Contact Productive Technology today to learn more about how our consulting services can help you produce the best requirements analysis for your project.