Gaining Momentum for

Requirements
Improvement

By: Patrick Heembrock

Gaining Momentum for Requirements Improvement

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Executive Summary

Requirements excellence cannot be achieved without first understanding the critical

capabilities of requirements maturity, and recognizing your organizations strengths and
weaknesses. In order to develop a focused plan of attack, it is necessary to assess your
requirements practice in each of six areas: process, technology, staff competency,
organization, techniques, and deliverables. You will then be armed with the
information you need to identify key improvement opportunities, recognize
organizational strengths, and form concrete goals for action.

This paper discusses the importance of creating a roadmap for long term requirements
success. It presents a summary of the capability areas of the Requirements Maturity
Model and provides a requirements maturity self assessment tool. Finally, it will walk you
through each of the levels of maturity and detail the steps you need to take to improve
requirements maturity and work your way to higher levels.

Contents

Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 1

Roadmap for Requirements Success ........................................................................................ 2
Requirements Capability Areas .................................................................................................. 2
Transition to Higher Maturity ........................................................................................................ 4
Closing Thoughts ........................................................................................................................... 6
About IAG Consulting .................................................................................................................. 7

Gaining Momentum for Requirements Improvement

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Roadmap for Requirements Success

Achieving long term requirements excellence is a goal shared by all organizations, but
realized by very few. A recent industry benchmark study1 found that over 74 per cent
of all companies have immature requirements practices. Typically, these companies
use an ad-hoc approach for requirements definition and management and, not
surprisingly, struggle to achieve consistent results.

Becoming a high maturity organization means taking control of the requirements

practice and creating a focused plan of action. Without such a plan you will have
blind spots, making it extremely difficult to recognize opportunities for improvement and
identify shortcomings. IAG has found that organizations that do not create an effective
plan will not sustain their improvement program over the long term. These organizations
tend to invest in performance improvement for a short period before losing momentum
and failing to show material performance change. Maturity improvement is not a
‘once-and-done’ activity requiring a little training and some new templates to be
completed in 6 months. It requires that improvement activities be specifically targeted
on the weak areas impeding maturity, while tangible, short term, improvement goals
should be plotted onto a timeline of longer-term change.

Requirements Capability Areas

The successful development of a requirements improvement plan at your organization

requires a clear understanding of IAG’s Requirements Maturity Model (RMM). The
Requirements Maturity Model is a proven model that
illustrates the relative level of business analysis
discipline and associated maturity in the organization. Becoming a high (requirements)
maturity organization means taking
It serves as a basis to perform an organizational
control of the requirements practice
capability assessment of requirements discovery, and creating a focused plan of
description, and documentation practices. action

Within each of the six capability areas, there are

specific characteristics that are evaluated to produce
an aggregate score. Try the self assessment tool below:

1 IAG Consulting. Business Analysis Benchmark Study, 2009

Gaining Momentum for Requirements Improvement

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 Requirements Maturity Self Assessment
How mature is your company’s
requirements practice? Rate your
organization’s performance on the chart to
the right for each of the six capability
areas. Read each maturity level
description, with a specific capability area
in mind, to determine the appropriate
maturity score for that capability score.
Level 1 is the lowest maturity and level 5 is
the highest.

Maturity is usually limited by the lowest

capability area score. Use this tool to
identify areas that are holding you back

Average Score:

Greatest Strength:

Area for Improvement:

Capability Areas Maturity Levels

Process: The definition, usage, and management of
requirements procedures
Staff Competency: The knowledge, skills, and
ability of the workforce
Practices & Techniques: The definition of how
analysts will perform work, and the efficiency and
effectiveness of these activities
Technology: The provision, usage, and
management of software tools in the context of
requirements practice
Level 1 (Performed) – Requirement activities are
not defined across the organization, resulting in
unpredictable, poorly controlled and inconsistent
results
Level 2 (Defined) – Requirement activities are
defined, and may be fully understood, there is little
consistency above a team or project level
Level 3 (Implemented) – Business analysis practice
is refined. Standard deliverables are produced.
Practices and deliverable standards are managed
centrally and routinely audited.

Deliverables: The work set definition and actual
documents produced as output from the
requirements process
Organization: Organizational model and services
delivered to stakeholders, the provision of resources
and resource management in the delivery of these
services, and the framework of process and tool
governance
Gaining Momentum for Requirements Improvement
Level 4 (Institutionalized) – The organization
routinely measures the results of all projects, using
enterprise quantitative objectives. Process,
practices, and techniques are followed consistently.
Level 5 (Optimizing) – the organization is
continually improving its processes. Quantitative
results from projects are used to identify and
implement optimal resolutions to defects.
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Transition to Higher Maturity

At Level 1: Make sure requirements are performed

Focus on change to documentation standards and automation around these

standards. You may get resistance around standardizing techniques and practices,
especially since the processes are immature. Stay away from trying to use advanced
techniques when more simple techniques will work. As you implement, make sure a
process is defined with adequate definition of roles and accountability and sufficient
training put in place to make the new standards stick. Also, think in terms of the
governance structure – perhaps auditing or peer reviewing requirements. These are
secondary and supportive activities to getting basic guidelines in place for
requirements documentation.

At Level 2: The company is working to define its approach to requirements definition

and management.

Firstly, the organization needs to develop some measures for success and service
delivery. These are likely to be well received. Keep the newly defined process
‘technique and technology agnostic’ for the short term until it can gain acceptance
through your trial periods. As the organization attempts to jump from Level 2 to Level 3,
it must emphasize:

Implementing defined requirements processes and standards

Applying defined practices and/or techniques to enable the process
Adjusting documentation standards to align with these standards
Communicating these standards to stakeholders

As the above four items are being implemented, carefully manage any supporting
activities such as targeted training, improvements in governance, and
communications.

At Level 3: The organization has implemented its approach to requirements definition

and management, now it needs to begin institutionalizing this approach.

In order to go from a defined process which is inconsistently executed to a defined

process that is consistently executed across a large company, the organization needs
to invest heavily in resource training and development. This is an essential bridge where

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analysts, project managers, stakeholders, etc. are trained on the process and
educated on what the impact of this process is expected to be.

Requirements practices must not roll out exclusively within the analyst function. To
implement, the organization must focus on broad-based education which includes
explaining what improved requirements means for executives. This is a fundamental
activity that will broadly differentiate the somewhat successful from the very successful.
While in this stage, organizations have positive returns from further tweaking their
standardized requirements processes. As these process changes are adopted,
templates evolve to deal with these emergent standards.

Towards the latter stages of implementation, it will become increasingly obvious that, as
greater centralization is achieved, it is necessary to implement technology for the
management of the requirements life cycle, business analyst resources, and
requirements governance. Since there is an increasingly stable environment,
investment in tools and infrastructure will be seen as logical and necessary.

At Level 4: Have a process that is institutionalized, To implement, the organization

and look for opportunities to optimize and must focus on broad-based
continuously improve this process. education which includes
explaining what improved
requirements means for executives
Investment in training and development of
business analysts remains an area of above
average return as the organization progresses into Level 4. An organization can adopt
more complex and efficient definition and management practices, and be more
efficient in the rollout of these activities.

While the organization is highly successful in implementing most things requirements-

related, its attention will turn increasingly toward score-carding or other measures for
diagnosing current performance and seeking opportunities for continuous
improvement. The resulting organization is highly standardized yet flexible in its
processes, documentation standards and communication with stakeholders.

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Closing Thoughts

Poor requirements definition and management wastes 34% of the average

organizations IT budget2 but the companies that do commit to making targeted
improvements tend to realize significant benefits. As requirements maturity increases,
so too does the magnitude of the impact in every category of change. While it may
be difficult to get momentum for low requirements maturity organizations, once
momentum is built, it becomes easier and easier to make further improvements to
requirements processes.

It is not enough, however, to focus your efforts on improving a single capability area.
There is a prevailing myth that a company can simply hire good business analysts and
expect the problem of poor requirements to disappear. The 2009 Business Analysis
Benchmark study found that having good analysts without also strengthening practices
in the other capability areas does not materially change the level of maturity. This is
consistent with the Requirements Maturity Model which does not graduate a company
to the next maturity level until it has made gains in every area.

In order to help companies build and sustain a case for change, IAG Consulting
developed the Requirements Management Maturity Assessment. The approach
leverages the RMM and, combined with data from the Business Analysis Benchmark
Study, establishes a measurable baseline founded on industry average performance at
each level of maturity. From this, change strategies and targets can be shaped into a
performance improvement plan.

2 Business Analysis Benchmark, 2009. IAG Consulting

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About IAG Consulting

IAG specializes in business and software requirements. Over the last 13 years, our
company has worked with 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, completed over 1,000
business and software requirements assignments, and trained over 15,000 business
analysts. Our organization focuses on a practical and practiced approach that is
efficient for all stakeholders in both business professional and information technology
departments. We bring measurable gains to our clients:

Reducing time needed to complete requirements

Ensuring completeness in documentation and reducing change requests
Issuing RFPs where vendors can bid accurately and clients get better
terms
Reducing costs in systems development
Salvaging troubled projects

Contacting An IAG Consulting Specialist

Email us at: sales@iag.biz or

Call our North American Toll Free line: 800-209-3616

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