The Project Coach

In our previous 2 articles, we’ve discussed how business requirements should originate in a cascading manner from goals and objectives, to assist in assigning their relative priorities.  We also reviewed tools that can be leveraged to help us remember the different areas or categories of requirements to capture.  But now let’s step back and consider, just what is a requirement anyway, and what is it not?  › Continue reading…

In her blog last week , Cindy Vandersleen talked about the challenges of gathering requirements and how the devil is always in the details.  I think many people would agree with this assessment; I know I do.  My best practice for gathering a comprehensive set of project requirements is to build a Requirements Template, and this week I’d like to share with you some tips for creating a model that your organization can use again and again to collect a comprehensive set of requirements and manage scope creep from the word “GO”.  › Continue reading…

There have been many articles written about requirements development from many perspectives.  I happen to believe this is one of the hardest tasks of any project, and one of the key contributors to scope creep.  As the initial scope statement is defined, everyone believes they understand it.  But the devil is always in the details.  As detailed requirements are elaborated from the scope definition, the misunderstandings emerge and the estimates in time and resources get blown.  Now as project manager you are faced with the all too familiar triple constraint dance of getting permission to add more resources, or time, or reducing some of the requirements. › Continue reading…