What’s the number one way you can be sure your investment in bespoke software development solution is going to achieve your business objectives? Ensure your software development team understands what you need.
Defining requirements for a bespoke software solution is challenging, so it’s tempting to skip it. Yet without written, clear requirements, your chances of a successful software development project are slim.
Designing and creating custom software solutions for businesses has been DragonPoint’s sole focus since 1988. With over 30 years of experience, we have refined our process for defining requirements that help us deliver on time and in budget projects. Unfortunately, we’ve followed many unsuccessful projects and are happy to share our clients’ lessons learned with you.
How do you create requirements that work? By avoiding the following common pitfalls.
- Assuming you and the developers understand your business process.
- Not putting requirements in writing.
- Having the wrong person write requirements.
- Not starting with pictures.
Following are details about the third pitfall. Click here to read our blog about avoiding the first pitfall, and click here to read our blog about the second pitfall. A future blog will cover the last pitfall and how to avoid it.
Pitfall 3: The wrong person writes requirements for your bespoke software.
Here are two ways well-intentioned companies have selected the wrong person to write software requirements, and the projects have failed.
User stories are only a starting point
We have followed software development teams that rely on user stories to define requirements. However, user stories are not requirements; they are just the starting point.
At DragonPoint, we consider user stories the “lazy” approach to defining requirements, because the solution provider is pushing off their work to their clients.
You cannot expect your marketing expert to handle your accounting nor do you want your accountants to sell your product or have your sales team to handle engineering. These would be ridiculous solutions.
Having your employees write user stories and calling those requirements is equally ridiculous. It’s like asking a group of people to submit one paragraph each and calling that a book. There will be no consistency among the paragraphs and there won’t be a cohesive story.
User stories provided by your employees are raw data about the bespoke software solution you want to create. The person writing your requirements has to convert the raw data into useful information. They do this by asking the right questions, challenging assumptions, and fitting all the details into the big picture.
The wrong writer trying to create the blueprint
While you may have some excellent writers on your team, the skills required to create great bespoke software requirements are unique. It may seem like a cost-effective solution to have someone who works for you write the requirements document, but there are a couple of reasons this doesn’t work.
- The person who works for you already has a job and can’t devote the necessary time to your software project.
- Great writers in other areas of your company, such as marketing, are unlikely to have the skillset required to create effective requirements documents.
A qualified requirements writer can gather the information and synthesize all the pieces. She will create a document that clearly and consistently communicates your software needs to the business stakeholders and the technical team.
You need a requirements documents that functions as the blueprint for a unified, consistent bespoke software solution. If you choose a writer who does not have the right skills, your requirements are likely to be the foundation of a failed software project.
To avoid this pitfall, only trust a qualified, experienced person to write your requirements.
Someone who can write a great requirements document for bespoke software development will be strong in all of these skill sets.
- Communicating verbally and in writing with both business teams and technical teams.
- Interviewing, which is necessary for gathering requirements from subject matter experts.
- Understanding the big picture and the details of business processes.
- Translating business requirements into tasks that will be completed by the software development team.
- Working as part of a team with the process owner(s), subject matter experts, and software development group.
- Experience: you don’t want to be the first company to trust an inexperienced writer with creating your requirements.
A trained, experienced business analyst or project manager can work with you and your team to understand your business needs. They will translate your needs into well-defined tasks that your subject matter experts can validate. Programmers will use these requirements to create the right code.
It’s tempting to think you can save money by writing your own requirements or delegating the task to your employees. However, unless the writers have the skills defined above, it will take a miracle for the requirements to result in the custom software solution you need.
Conclusion
Successful bespoke software solutions are possible if you start with strong requirements that clearly define the system that will meet your business needs.
Of course, great requirements alone don’t guarantee great software. You also need a skilled team including a strong project manager, qualified developers, testers who catch every detail, and a support team that prioritizes your success.
If you’d like more information about DragonPoint’s successful bespoke software solutions and our team, please email sales@dragonpoint.com or call 321-631-0657.
For another great article on project management and requirements, click here.
