Practical Cases of BA Process Consulting

for Software Development and Product Management Companies

Overview

• Target: Requirements Management Process Improvement

• Clients: software outsourcing and product development companies with development personnel exceeding 200 employees

• Methods: requirements management process assessment and improvement steps development

• Results: goals achieved

Case 1: Custom Mobile Applications Development Company• Company Size: Approx. 200 people

• Clients: banks, insurance companies

• Project Roles: Project Managers, Business Analysts, System Analysts, Developers, Software Quality Assurance Engineers

• Business Analysis Scope: business requirements, user needs, high-level functional requirements, non-functional requirements

• Problems announced: requirements inconsistency, requirements development takes more time than planned (3 and more times), problems with requirements elicitation

Case 2: Software Product Development Company• Company Size: Approx. 3200 people

• Clients: Software product users

• Project Roles: Product Managers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, System Analysts, Developers, Software Quality Assurance Engineers, Support Engineers, Technical Writers

• Business Analysis Scope: business requirements, user needs, high-level functional requirements, functional requirements, non-functional requirements

• Problems announced: Requirements Management process needs improvement

BA Process Assessment

• Methods used: • Interviewing employees (two methods: questionnaires and discussions)

• Questionnaires are used to define the assessment scope and get the whole picture

• Discussions are used to define the trouble area• Reviewing the requirements

• Goal: the requirements quality assessment• Reviewing project plans

• Goal: find the problems with BA activities planning• Reviewing project infrastructure

• Goal: find the problems with the tools BA use• Reviewing the BA process guidelines

• Goal: find the problems with BA process

Questionnaires

• Focused on: • Requirements elicitation techniques

• Requirements documenting techniques

• Using templates for requirements documenting

• Basic steps of BA process (requirements elicitation phase and requirements analysis phase) and their goals

• Planning the BA tasks

• Performing BA tasks

Requirements Reviews

• Requirements Quality: • “3 C”: Consistency, Completeness, and Correctness

• Unambiguity

• Necessity

• Atomicity

• Testability

• Changeability

• Traceability

• Manageability

Project Plan Reviews

• Planning BA Activities: • Time for domain area study• Time for requirements elicitation (interviewing the stakeholders,

users, studying the documents, etc.)• Time for requirements analysis• Time for requirements documenting• Time for requirements modelling• Time for requirements and models updates• …• Time for thinking

Project Plan Reviews

• When do BA activities estimated times and performance times differ so dramatically?• Some BA tasks “escape” from plans• Some estimations are made before we can estimate correctly• Requirements change very quickly• A BA participates in so many projects simultaneously• Many BAs participate in a single project, and the work isn’t split

among them correctly• The BAs are not familiar with the domain area• Requirements quality is low

Project Infrastructure Review

• Project infrastructure must have:• Tools for requirements documenting

• Tools for sharing requirements with the project team

• Tools for easy requirements changing

• Tools for requirements version control

BA process guidelines Reviews

• What is missing in the guidelines?• Specifications templates

• Process goals

• Process measurability

• Change Management practices

Making the Conclusion

• Are there any problems?• Studying the information you collected

• Making qualitative and quantitative estimations

• Using BA-related project metrics

• Defining the root of the troubles

Making the Qualitative Estimations

• Metrics• The requirements scope

• The requirements quality

• The requirements changeability

• The requirements manageability

• The BA’s work quality as a whole

Requirements Scope Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the requirements scope

• Distribute the work among BAs correctly

• Metrics:• Number of software project/product requirements

• Number of functional requirements

• Number of use cases and use case points for the project/product

• Number of non-functional requirements

Requirements Quality Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the requirements quality

• Metrics:• Number of errors in the software requirements in a

project/product (after the analysis phase finalization)• Number of errors per requirement (after the analysis phase

finalization)• The level of detail for software requirements (qualitative

estimation, for example: low/medium/high)• Compliance with standards, templates, etc. (when applicable)

Requirements Quality Metrics

• What are errors in the software requirements?

• Inconsistency, incompleteness, incorrectness

• Ambiguity

• Absence of necessity

• Inability to verify requirements in tests

BA Activities Planning Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the BA activities

• Metrics:• Estimated time for BA activities (by category)

• Performance time for BA activities (by category)

• Accuracy of BA work planning: (Performance time - Estimated time)/ Estimated time

Requirements Management Process Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the requirements

• Metrics:• Number of requirements changes (by category, per project phase)• Number of requirements changes in relation to project scope: Number

of changes (by category, per project phase) / Total number of requirements for the project (by category, per project phase)

• Requirements traceability (percent of software requirements traced to other requirements and other project artefacts)

Product Metrics and Requirements Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the product quality

• Metrics:• Number of software “bugs” for every software requirement

• Max number of software “bugs” per software requirement

• Average number of software “bugs” per software requirement

• Metrics related to the software quality attributes

Customer-Focused Metrics

• Goals:• Manage the customer satisfaction

• Metrics:• Problems related to the software utilization

• Customer satisfaction level (expectations vs experiences)

Conclusions

• Investigate the customer problems with the BA process assessment techniques

• Use BA process assessment techniques properly

• Use metrics to find the key problems and make decisions

Thank You

E-mail: nzhelnova@teamcit.ru

LinkedIn: Natalia Zhelnova

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