actionable requirements

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Actionable Requirements by Armond Mehrabian September 21, 2010

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This presentation describes the process of producing rich product requirements by collaborative game play. It also discusses the phases of product innovation in both waterfall and agile environments.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Actionable Requirements

Actionable Requirementsby Armond Mehrabian

September 21, 2010

Page 2: Actionable Requirements

Actionable Requirements

The challenges we face

Defining product requirements

Assessing opportunities

Discovering solutions

Tools for opportunity assessment

The process of solution discovery and definition

The agile product innovation process

Q & A

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

Why is it so difficult?

Requires deep domain knowledge

Requires leadership

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Actionable Requirements

Agile teams are now developing software more quickly

than ever before. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean they

are always aimed at building the right products.

-Mike Cohn

Author of Agile Estimating and Planning

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Actionable Requirements

Levels of planning

What are you trying to

understand?

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

Some tools for opportunity assessment

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Actionable Requirements

Tools for customer understanding

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Actionable Requirements

Tools for customer understanding

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Actionable Requirements

Tools for customer understanding

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Actionable Requirements

Tools for customer understanding

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Actionable Requirements

Tools for customer understanding

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Actionable Requirements

Discover what is most painful to your customers

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Actionable Requirements

Understand customer’s strategic direction

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Actionable Requirements

Discover what is most important to your customers

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Actionable Requirements

Discover what is most important to your customers

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Actionable Requirements

Discover what is most important to your customers

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Actionable Requirements

Discover the unusual and exciting features for your product

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Actionable Requirements

Some best practices

Have a Customer Advisory Board (CAB)

Need 2 for enterprise software

Plan 3-6 months in advance

Your team

Facilitator

Helper

Observer/Photographer

Try it on internal customers and teams first!

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Actionable Requirements

Compile and consolidate learning

Revisit the planning onion

Write up the marketing requirements document (MRD)

Determine the minimal marketable feature-set (MMF)

Let’s look at an example

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Actionable Requirements

A one-page opportunity assessment1) Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)

2) For whom do we solve the problem? (target market)

3) How will we measure success?

4) What alternatives are out there?

5) Why we’re best suited to do this?

6) Why now?

7) How will we deploy this?

8) What is the preliminary cost?

9) What factors are critical to success?

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

Why do we need product discovery?

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Actionable Requirements

Prototyping

It is far more effective to sit in a chair than judge its

comfort by a picture of it.

-Henry Dreyfuss, Designing for People

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Actionable Requirements

Benefits of a high fidelity prototype

Provides a way to test out your ideas before spending

time and money to build them for real

Forces you to think about the problem at a much greater

level of detail

Gives developers a much greater detail product

requirement

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

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Actionable Requirements

Conclusion

We can have a process for requirements gathering

Three phases to actionable requirements

People Tools/Artifacts

Opportunity

Assessment

Product Mkg

Product Mgmnt

Architecture

MRD

Innovation Games

Solution Discovery

and Design

User Experience

Lead Engineer

Product Mgr

PRD

Prototype

HiFi Wireframe

Solution Execution Engineering/Test

Teams

Fully functioning

product

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Actionable Requirements

Resources:

Innovation Games – Luke Hohmann

Ten Faces of Innovation – Tom Kelley

Inspired – Marty Cagan

Purple Cow – Seth Godin

Agile Estimation and Planning – Mike Cohn

Dilbert – Scott Adams

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Actionable Requirements

Presenter:

Armond Mehrabian

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: armond_m

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/amehrabian