Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Consolidated Business Themes
This is a consolidation of what was documented for each interview session.
When a business theme was discussed in more than one session, make sure
that this provides a complete, cross-functional description reflecting all of the
needs. Even if a theme was only mentioned in one session, it should still be
included here. In the future, this will be the primary source for requirements.
The individual session documentation will serve as a reference for finding out
more about a topic. Examples of how the business themes are documented
were provided previously in this chapter as the samples.
NOTE
Why not just jump to a consolidated document? It is much more difficult
to analyze what was said in multiple sessions at once than to understand and
document each step along the way. It is also helpful to keep the interviewees
involved and feeling like their participation is specifically benefiting the project.
When the requirements are melded together, it is more difficult to determine
where they actually originated.
Candidate Business Analyses
Each business theme will have at least one analysis that helps address those
challenges. If specific analyses are not mentioned, then the project must reflect
on the theme to determine what might be helpful to support it. The process
to identify analyses is usually driven by the business representatives on the
project team. If there are too many business themes to fully develop the
analyses, then this may be done for those themes that will be the focus of this
project. The last section of this chapter reviews how to ensure that the project
charter and scope align with what was learned during this requirements
gathering process.
In other cases, specific business analyses may have been mentioned during
the interview process and documented for that session. If so, this would be
a consolidation of all the different analyses mentioned. Sometimes you will
have a collection of analyses that have been identified, which can help you to
identify an overall business theme. While looking at the types of analyses that
are currently performed can be helpful, this should not be an exercise to create
a complete report inventory.
Consolidated Business Data Requirements
This is a consolidation of all of the different data that was identified in each
interview session. Again, if the same data was mentioned multiple times, then
a complete description of that data should be put together. If the source of
the business data is well known, then the more detailed name of the database
