One of the leading factors in failing projects is poor definition of requirements, and students complain about the poor functionality of our systems. We could improve our requirements by introducing better quality into our BA process and to present requirements in a much more user centric way.  

I would therefore like to:

1. Create user centric templates for requirements documentation
2. Introduce requirements traceability

1.    Create user centric way of capturing requirements which would:

• Help the business understand the requirements better which would also reduce the pain involved in signing off requirements
• Create better testing – tests would revolve around the business processes

This would involve:

• Consulting with developers on how they would like to see the requirements documentation presented
• Consulting with the business and Service Management on how they would like to see the requirements documentation presented
• Consult with other business analysts for industry best practices
• As checklists and templates are critical quality control tools I would produce user centric requirements templates and guidelines so analysts are presenting in the same way
• Create standard notation for process modelling and some of our basic business analysis techniques which would work for both the user centric approach and also the standard waterfall approach. The business would therefore not get presented with different processes for every project they are involved with.

2.    I would also like to introduce the use of a requirements traceability matrix. It is a difficult task keeping on top of changing requirements, especially in large projects, and it is something we do not do well enough

This would involve:

• Investigating what is available in the marketplace for requirements traceability so see if there is something we could readily use
•  If not, or if too complicated, set up our own template
• Create guidelines for use