Risk Management – Sharing the Learning - Scenario 5

One line requirement

Potential Challenges:

1. Incorrect assessment of the impact – If one liner requirements are taken at face value, there is a risk on missing out very critical impacts.

2. The above situation can very easily translate into estimates way off the mark risking the entire initiative.

3. If estimates are arrived at based on high level requirements and communicated to the client, the client, at times, starts expecting the final cost in similar ranges. This can become an issue from financial sponsorship of the project.

4. In such situations where functional requirements can not available, it is very easy to loose focus of non functional requirements; mainly usability and performance needs

Mitigation Strategies:

1. Multiple Options – A short term, near term and a long term solution can be thought of and discussed with the client.

2. Knowledge Management – Knowing the domain of the customer / application is very important to assess the right impact.
E.g. In transportation domain a one line requirement saying that improve the visibility of shipment on web tracking system has a potential to translate into very high amount of impact. The change would be required to all operational systems to generate such information, processing it and persist it. The data services applications will need to retrieve it and finally the delivery channels will need to display it. This could well be a program of 6+ months

3. Client Education – It is necessary to make sure that the client understands the true complexity and extent of impact. This will help to make the client appreciate the budget and timelines.

4. Even if non functional requirements are not stated, the same can be derived based on past experience in same or similar domain / implementations. This can be shared with the client to ensure correctness of the information.