Active customer and user participation throughout the design and development lifecycle is essential to the success of any IT or business improvement project. Stakeholder communication is so important that it is specifically identified in the Business Analysts Body of Knowledge (BABOK):
The Requirements Communication Knowledge Area is the collection of activities and considerations for expressing the output of the requirements analysis and documentation to a broad and diverse audience. Requirements communication is an ongoing, iterative activity that is done in parallel with Requirements Gathering and Requirements Analysis and Documentation. It includes presenting, communicating, verifying, and gaining approval of the requirements from the stakeholders and implementers of the project.
Recognizing the importance of stakeholder communication and continuous collaboration, the Enfocus Requirement Suite™ provides subscribers the Web 2.0-based Stakeholder Portal.™ No other requirements management service offers a similar capability, providing access and transparency to users and other stakeholders throughout the software development and implementation process.
The Stakeholder Portal™ is a secure cloud-based service dedicated to the myriad of interested parties that goes beyond meetings and shared word processing documents to truly connect stakeholders – including users, suppliers, customers, and consultants – no matter where they are located. It’s an easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use interface that makes conversations happen among business leaders, developers, project managers, and – most importantly – stakeholders about information that’s key to project success, including goals, needs, challenges, and opportunities.
The Web 2.0 underpinnings of Stakeholder Portal™ allow stakeholders to engage and collaborate throughout the various stages of the project lifecycle, as enumerated below:
- Project Background – Stakeholders review the project vision, scope, and objectives to gain a good understanding of why the project was initiated and what the business wants to accomplish.
- Enterprise Knowledge – Stakeholders access complete, accurate, and reuseable information on, among others, business rules, business processes, stakeholder profiles, and products and services so as to get an even better idea of what’s important to them.
- Stakeholder Needs – Stakeholders enter their needs using their own words. Standardized patterns and templates are provided to ensure meaningful data is collected and organized for requirements analysis. Needs are organized by project scope statements so that out-of-scope needs are prioritized accordingly.
- Attachments – Stakeholder Portal™ makes collaboration easy. Stakeholders gather, upload, and share documents, forms, policies, and regulations to which the development team needs ready access.
- Stakeholder Analysis – Stakeholders participate in stakeholder analysis by providing information, such as how many people will be impacted, where people are located, and any special considerations concerning organizational alignment, job definitions, skills, training, and culture.
- Task Assignments – RequirementPro™ and Stakeholder Portal™ have a common task management system. This means users of RequirementPro™ can maximize Stakeholder Portal to assign stakeholders tasks to gather information, define their needs, or conduct a review. These tasks always appear on the dashboard of Stakeholder Portal.™ With this tool, stakeholders can clearly know what is expected of them and when their assignments are due.
- Commenting – Because Stakeholder Portal™ is interactive, stakeholders add comments at any time to clarify requirements or to express concerns. Comments equate to conversations in the Agile development methodology.
- Validation – During requirements validation, stakeholders evaluate bundles of requirements to ensure they address their needs. Seeing multiple requirements categorized by similar criteria helps stakeholders spot any holes, and here they record when they see unclear, missing, or incomplete requirements.
- Participation in Lifecycle Events – Using the requirements and predefined tests and verifications called checklists, stakeholders participate in project success throughout the entire lifecycle. For example, they verify that their needs and requirements are included in a design document, ensure that their needs are addressed during User Acceptance Testing, and express satisfaction with the system after its installation. The requirements lifecycle management functionality incorporated in the Enfocus Requirement Suite™ is considerably more powerful than the simple requirements traceability provided in other requirements management solutions.
- Project Retrospective – Stakeholders participate in project retrospectives to capture organizational knowledge about lessons learned.
- Business Analysis – Every stakeholder need is analyzed by a business analyst and tagged for prioritization, urgency, and business value. Stakeholders analyze their own needs and the needs of other stakeholders using these tags as filters.
- Requirements Review – As analysts specify requirements, the requirements are mapped to stakeholder needs. Circling back, stakeholders review and validate the requirements to ensure their needs are met.
As a resource focused on collaboration and sharing, Stakeholder Portal™ features a Project News and Information Center that keeps stakeholders informed and involved in projects and allows new stakeholders to quickly catch up. This Center showcases posts and comments similar to a blog, and it can be searched with results sorted by date and type. Types of information featured in the Center include:
- High-level project status information
- Upcoming stakeholder events (e.g., group requirement planning sessions, walkthroughs, webinars)
- Project successes and recognition to teams or individuals
- Lessons learned to prevent problems from occurring in the future
- Request for comments
- Issues and the related resolutions to explain conflicts among needs of stakeholders and how they were resolved
- Guidance to clarify instructions or provide guidelines on how to define needs
- Recommended reading to help stakeholders or project team members gain a deeper understanding through documents, books, external reports, competitor fact sheets, best practice guides, and industry publications.
- Requirement change requests to keep everyone informed of changes
- Survey and questionnaires, including those from Survey Monkey or Snapsurveys.com, along with survey results
- Questions and answers
- Other general information
The need for requirements communication is here to stay. It is an essential process contributing to reducing the thousands of failed projects that occur every year because of incomplete or misunderstood user input, incomplete requirements and specs, and changing requirements and specs. With so much on the line in today’s business climate, it’s a great time to look to the tenets of Web 2.0 technology to get stakeholders talking, and more importantly, to listen to and maximize what they say. The transparency and information available through Stakeholder Portal™ above all else contributes to improved relations between the business and IT communities.
For more information, please download our product fact sheet below.
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