The IT side of M&A integration involves much more than an integration of IT systems; due to the business risk involved, and in the effort to create value from the M&A, it will demand complete, accurate, consumable software requirements. Done properly, it should really start with a negotiation of business needs, with the system integration [...]

Today most business analysts are familiar with the notion of mapping features and requirements to business objectives to discern what will provide the business with the most value. This approach is extremely valuable as it provides evidence to management of what parts of the system are providing what kind of return on investment.  The picture gets [...]

With the latest trend towards “cloud computing”, it’s worth taking a moment to stop and think about how requirements practices change for cloud computing projects. Bill Flowers did just that here at RQNG. My two cents on this topic is that in some cases, your requirements practices don’t change at all for a cloud computing [...]

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When eliciting software requirements, there are a few major models that I primarily fall back on to help visualize the process, the system and the requirements: cross-functional process flows, use cases, system context diagrams and data-diagrams.   I have recently been using more models that I am less familiar with, such as the State Diagram and [...]

I have been on teams that created requirements for replacing old “Green Screen” mainframe applications and have also observed the work of my colleagues on similar projects. The observations here are based on our experiences with these efforts and offer suggestions to anyone who is about to embark on a similar project. This post is [...]

At INCOSE 2007, I attended a panel discussion “Requirements Engineering for Software vs. Systems in General?”. The moderator was H. Kaindl and the panelists included R. Griego, M. Hause, C. Hood and M. Mannion. This content is all paraphrased or interpreted from things the panelists said. So to start, a common response from the panelists [...]

If you know ahead of time that the software is going to be purchased instead of built, how does the requirements process differ from that of a standard development project? I think a key difference in a supplier selection project comes from the fact that you are buying functionality that already exists. And while you [...]

We recently finished a project fully documenting a very large existing system. The ecosystem was made of about 30 applications working together and was obviously very complex. This is not unusual in large organizations. The goal of the project was to understand enough about the existing requirements of the system to completely replace the system. [...]

On Tuesday I began an overview of the processes behind gathering requirements for a migration project and how these activities differ from a system with new functionality. I began by talking about scope, understanding business needs and working with end users. Although these activities have a lot in common with the approach for a new [...]