Our organization’s structure can confound what constitutes and output. Consider the company that is structured as a “functional” organization, the output from one group will typically go to another group in the system. This organization structure is sometimes referred to as “silo” since each part of the company, group or department is segregated by expertise. This has […]
Each process produces some sort of, at least intermediate output. The ultimate output will be the resultant of the series of inputs, processes and outputs, and will be directed toward the ultimate end customer. Therefore the ultimate output capability is the collection of all of the inputs and processes of the systems of the organization. […]
The next few blogs will be further elaborating on the systems concept of SIPOC. Upon completion of the characters or phases in the systems thinking and chain of events (SIPOC itself), we will illustrate how we can use these to improve our organization’s capability. This post will treat “suppliers”. We are not referring to drug […]
We see well-meaning people adopt an attitude “if it needs done, then I will do it” even if their job or position in the company does not define them as the person to solve the problem. I call this absorption and it is part of the much ballyhooed “can-do attitude” upon which many companies thrive. […]
Once we have our captured our requirements. We identify the substance of the content for the iterations from the development. In fact, recall from the requirements prioritization blog post. That work has given us some insight into how the iterative packages could be developed and what content or capabilities are to be delivered. In the […]
One under or ineffectively used tool is the specification or requirements review, which is a form of design review. In this case we are reviewing the design while it is still easy and cheap to make adjustments. Experience suggests, if we do not just forget to do this activity, it is a hastily arranged activity […]
You need not been so technically skilled to be able to see how many project fail due to requirements. We provide a brief list of the failings below: Requirements control Insufficient time Did not include the sponsor or customer Late delivery of requirements Requirements traceability We will not write any more on requirements control that […]
The initial product requirements provide the product baseline. Our project planning will be focused upon delivering meeting these requirements. In a phased development process, we will prioritize the requirements (shown earlier) and deliver iterations. This staged delivery allows us to gain additional insight into the product. We may learn things that necessitate changes to the […]
Our configuration management is borne out of our requirements. In our earlier blog post, we discussed how the project scope must be traceable to the requirements. In the case we present below, the project scope is a particular function or need to be met, for example a new feature or function for an automobile. We […]
This may sound difficult, but there are some rules for good requirements. According to the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE http://www.incose.org/chicagoland/docs/Writing%20Effective%20Requirements.pdf), requirements should have the attributes below (similarly can be found at IEEE): Necessary – driven by the objective of the project and business Verifiable – ability to objectively confirmed that the requirement is […]