Implementation of Requirements Process

SITUATION:  A regional North American telecom carrier's Information Technology department had no processes in place to gather and manage requirements.  For two years preceding Alliance's involvement, IT had not delivered a singe solution that the business could use.  Requirements were informally gathered during hallway conversations and were not documented.  IT directors were then blindsided by business users regularly telling them, "This is not what I asked for."  The business was preparing to launch a complex product offering involving their leased lines and the billing team needed to deliver a solution.  Understanding that they lacked the processes and know-how to manage a complex project, they engaged Alliance.  

OUR EXPERIENCE:  The Alliance consultant who was engaged for the project had 20 years of requirements gathering experience, 20 years of project management experience.  Specifically, this includes 16 years of telecom industry experience in project roles including project management, business requirements and process development, technical documentation, detail design, development, testing, implementation, and training.  She had the expertise to conduct the "big picture" analysis as well as develop detailed requirements template to all levels of business and technical expertise.  

SOLUTION:  The Alliance consultant employed a three-phased approach to helping the client develop a requirements process.

First, she introduced some structure to the SDLC process.  She worked with IT and business users to develop a RACI (Responsible – Accountable – Consulted – Informed) Matrix as a formal way of establishing the role of each stakeholder or participant.  She also created an information flow diagram to illustrate and clarify communication paths between departments including Marketing, Product, Revenue Assurance and Information Technology.  

Second, she worked with the client on use case analysis.  They had never performed the exercise of studying detailed scenario-driven situations to help drive business and system requirements.

Third, she developed a requirements process that worked for the client.  Huge volumes of methodologies can be intimidating so the Alliance consultant drew elements from the Project Management Body of Knowledge and adapted them to fit the client’s specific needs.  She developed templates (with instructions) for conducting questionnaires, documenting scenarios, tracking requirements, and measuring success.  She trained teams of Business Systems Analysts on how to follow the process and use the templates.  The process included meeting with business units to understand high-level requirements, meeting with IT subject matter experts to explore system capabilities and recommended solutions, identifying gaps, determining success criteria, and getting signoff.  She also documented processes for IT scope definition and requirements intake submission.

RESULTS:  

·       Using the newly implemented methodology, Alliance oversaw seven projects, including the implementation of wholesale billing customers and multiple decomposition-base projects, including the web-based store.  After two years of delivering no workable solution, the client's IT department was able to shorten development windows to as little as seven days and provide solutions that met the success criteria of the business users.

·      Because of the extensive training Alliance provided, the client's business analysts and project managers are able to successfully manage the new processes independently.

TESTIMONIALS: 

"Alliance conducted a very thorough knowledge transfer to our Business Analyst Team, so that our employees have the tools they need to continue with the progress we've made."  

- IT Business Analyst Manager

"Before Alliance came on board, our IT department had a very weak track record of delivering what we needed.  This impacted our ability to launch new products and open new revenue streams.  Once Alliance put the structure and processes in place for IT to understand our requirements, everyone was on the same page with what needed to happen to make software changes.  We all now understand who is responsible for what, how to communicate what we need our software to do, and how to measure whether it works as intended."  

- Revenue Assurance Manager

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