Information Technology Reference
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4. There is also a likelihood of contradiction in the perceptions of senior man-
agement functionaries and the working level functionaries. So we also need to
examine closely the information provided by the senior management personnel
and the working level personnel to identify the contradictory requirements.
Summarizing, there is a possibility of contradiction in the requirement if more
than one individual provides information for that requirement. So examine all such
information and eliminate contradictory requirements,
Identify System Interfaces—End users are likely to cross system boundaries
and give requirements that form part of another system. For example, a supply
chain system has close linkages with operations as well as finance. End users are
likely to give requirements that actually fall within either operations or finance.
Similarly, CRM has linkages with operations and finance. The operations
department would have linkages with supply chain, CRM, finance as well as
human resource systems. Whenever end users specify requirements that actually
form part of another system, we need to identify them as requirements for inter-
faces with other systems. We need to identify all such requirements and classify
them under system interface requirements. When we identify a system interface
requirement, we need to ensure that:
1. The other system with which the interface is needed is identified
2. The data to be received from the other system is defined
3. The data that is to be transmitted to the other system is defined
4. The protocols, if any, for the interface are identified
5. The entry and exit criteria for the interface are defined
Identify Stakeholders for each Requirement—We need to identify the
stakeholders for each of the requirements. These are the persons who need to be
approached during the project execution for any clarification about the require-
ment. The primary stakeholders of course, are the individuals performing the
function and the secondary stakeholders are the superiors, providers of inputs to
and recipients of outputs from the person performing the function. We need to
carry out this task for each of the requirements.
Prioritize the Requirements—Prioritization is the setting of the order of
implementing the requirements when there is a resource crunch. If resources are
available all requirements would be implemented concurrently. This priority will
help the project management to implement requirements of higher priority first if
they find themselves short of the requisite resources. Here are some rules for
setting priority to help you:
1. Dominant factor first—sometimes, it may be possible that a certain function
needs to be implemented first. For example, in most applications there would be
master data files and without these being created/maintained, the application
would not run. Therefore, they need to be implemented first. This type of
constraint is referred to as the dominant factor.
2. Most linked first—in many applications there would be some modules which
would have maximum linkages with the remaining modules. For example, the
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