After the kick-off.... Zachman and Requirements

Given the time I had to prepare for the Requirements sessions, they actually came and went without any big surprises. I met with different groups of end-users, usually by the Role/Job they performed, and fleshed things out here and there. I also met separately with Management about future changes to the business; that was tougher but the artifacts I had did show the differences that that would be needed in the future (essentially new Roles and more locations).

After that, I did have to reformat everything into declarative Requirement Statements, and re-group them into function, data, technical, and other categories; that's the way the current methodology arranges things when presenting to senior management. So, all the content was there, you just have to be ready to present it in different ways depending on your audience.

...and the audience yesterday was senior management on a steering committee and, six hours later, all was received with approval and appreciation.

As usual, the run-up to this review with senior people was tight, took lots of hours, and IT management had two other analysts come on to help meet the review date. So, there were some long work-days, including while I was down DC, but it was worth it in the end.

Next Up: massaging the Requirements into a standard RFP format and getting it out the main vendor we are dealing with...

David Wright
Member, IIBA
"The waterfall is not too long, the river is too wide."