Requirements from Business are not always Business Requirements

Working in the industry, there seems to be confusion among Business Analysts as well as clients about the role of business analyst when it comes to requirement gathering and scoping.

Majority of them feels requirement scoping and gathering is a one way process which can be depicted as below:

It is observed that business users interact with the actual users and communicates the same to the BA. In a majority of cases clients try to communicate the solution to BA (What?) rather than the problem itself (Why?). This restricts the thinking and analytical boundaries of the BA. In this approach, for the entire project, BA observes the role of communicator/Mediator between technical team and Business rather than the analyst.

In majority cases where the above approach is used, the project is not a complete success while in few cases it is a failure.

Consider this classic example:

Case:  A leading multi brand retail chain decided to create its brand image by developing a mobile application that will help to create brand recall value and increase foot falls in their retail stores. This will also allow them to reach to their target customers. Business discussed with marketing teams and accounts team and requirement was given to BA that a Mobile application has to be developed in Android (As statistics said that Android smart phones have major penetration and market share) along with the list of features. BA/PM made it a point to deliver the best in terms of features and quality.

But once the app was released it met the requirements given by business but did not met business objectives. It was later analyzed and found that the customer base of the retail outlet was SEC A customers who hardly use android phone. SEC A customers preferred iPhones/blackberry over android phones.  Also Android phone users hardly preferred these stores due to its high rate product range.

This would have been avoided if the business would have mentioned the main problem and objectives rather than giving solution. It is responsibility of the BA to analyze all factors using various techniques like PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis, MOST etc and then arrive at logical solution that will overcome the business problem

The above illustration explicitly proves that it is not advisable to accept the requirement given by the business blindly and exclusively work only on those. The business user always has business objective set and overview of the actual activities and process. However the ground reality is completely different and complex. It can be understood only when the BA closely interacts with the actual users of the system. This not only makes the solution complete but also user friendly. It is worth to note that any project is successful only when it is accepted by the end users.

For a successful project it is necessary that business needs to adopt the following approach for requirement gathering and scope finalization:

1. Understand requirements from the Business users: This is important step as during this process the BA understands business objective, Problem overview and High level requirement from the client. The outcome of this step should be used as the guideline / threshold for scoping.
2. Interact with actual end users: Interact with users and further detail out the problem obtained in the previous step. If these problems can be solved, it will indirectly solve the main problem making all stakeholders viz. Business users, end users happy.
3. Analyze source data, current processes: This will help in designing the solution with minimum change to current process and maximum benefit.

The above process can be depicted as below:

From above we can conclude that requirements from business together with analysis by BA on the basis of interaction with end users, current process observation and analyze source data will result in the Business requirement.

About Author:

Saurabh Kane is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: saurabh.k@spluspl.com