How to package your Requirements

The process of systems analysis and defining software requirements can effectively be broken down into a five step process: Gather, Organize, Analyze, Synthesize, and Validate.

Now let’s take a moment and focus on step two, “Organize.” The information from the “Gathering” stage will likely be sprawling, unorganized, and random. Your client or business partner likely gave you whatever information came to mind in the order that it popped into his or her head. Likely it is at varying levels of details and contains information that ranges from conceptual to the detailed standard operating procedure level. Your job here is to make sense out this brain-dump. You need to group like items together in logical and systemic way. Categorize like items, identify topics that are way out of scope, and if you can establish some kind of hierarchy of detail. This will pay off big time in subsequent steps of the system and business analysis process

Now, the raw materials you got from you business partner might make you feel like you got a raw deal. But fear not. A mind map is excellent tool to bring order to the din. If you think back to grammar school you might remember these “brainstorming diagrams.” There is a word in the middle that usually describes the overall topic that all the other ideas are related to or fit within. From there, other words are connected to the central theme. The second level of words have their own connected words and so forth. This can go on forever. When you are all done it will look like a big spider web.

The reason a mind map is so great at this stage is its flexibility. Since your raw requirements might be all over the board, put them directly into a rigid outline might prove very difficult and you could find yourself spinning in circles. Here since the format is so loosely defined, you do not need to worry about breaking any rules. You can freely capture and take your best guess.

MindMeister is a great tool to help in this process. It is actually a mind mapping software tool and has some pretty amazing features. It also offers a free trial so check out the link at the end of this article to find out more.

When your mind map is complete, you are ready to take things to another level of refinement. It is time for the old fashioned outline. Just like writing a paper back in Junior High, it is time to make a Roman Numeral style outline. This will force you to think just a little bit more about the massive brain dump you just completed with your mind map. Follow the hierarchy of your thought bubbles and you should have an outline very quickly. This well structured outline will really make sure you have the correct ideas mapped together and from an information point of view it will expose the topics on which you have very low level requirement (these will have many sub-levels) vs. the topics that need some more detail.

So, lets recap. Raw business requirements should be organized to allow for easier analysis and synthesis of software requirements. Mind mapping is a great technique for organizing such information. Electronic tools like MindMeister help speed this process and create mind maps that are easily used in the later steps of systems analysis.

Click Here to learn more about software requirements. Follow this link if you want to learn more about MindMeister.