Integrated Requirements

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Capiro's Holistic Approach to Requirements and Business Analysis

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A Skill Set for Business Analysis Consultants.

We believe that there are many aspects to requirements engineering; these aspects, shown in the quadrants of the above grid may be considered to collectively cover the realm of business, process and data analysis, from  strategy to implementation.

Frequently these aspects are considered separately and may be associated with specialist roles such as business rules analyst or business process analyst. Sometimes one aspect is touted as being somehow more important than the others. Whilst not denying the value of specialists, every business analyst should have at least an appreciation of the entire set. They are all important. The business analyst should be sensitive to the nature of the project at hand and should dynamically determine whether a particular sub-set of the full set is more relevant to a particular situation.

Requirements Activities

The Activities quadrant in the above chart shows the activities typically associated with requirements engineering. But effective requirements engineering and business analysis should not be carried out in isolation.

Requirements Context

Requirements need to be seen in a particular context; see the Context quadrant in the above chart. The context will help to ensure relevance and completeness and will affect how we capture and record requirements, in particular the level of detail and formality that is appropriate.

Requirements Enablers

In conducting the requirements activities it is usually necessary to use one or more of the Enablers shown in the above chart. Separation of the individual enablers helps to manage complexity and supports the development of flexible and maintainable systems.

Requirements Interfaces

To achieve success with requirements it is necessary that the business analyst works with other groups - these groups are shown in the Interfaces quadrant of the above chart.

Benefits of the Integrated Approach to Business Analysis

The integrated approach, properly applied by professional specialists, will be a significant contributor to the rapid creation of high quality, relevant and useful requirements; these will be the basis for the development of systems that are needed by the business now and are readily adaptable to meet changing business needs. We believe that the approach maximises the chances of being right first time.