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New Post 4/26/2012 5:06 PM
User is offline GBusiness
35 posts
9th Level Poster


Gathering Requirements for a Brand New Project 

Hello All, 

I need some advice. I am considering a position which involves a project that involves migrating data from a system to another. This is a new project in which there is no team and no scope. I will have to go in and start building this project from the ground up. My question is, how to I go about doing this? What should I do in the first 30 days? How do I gather requirements?

Thanks for your help!

Nadia

 
New Post 5/24/2012 5:38 PM
User is offline M Prasad - http://mprasad.com
5 posts
10th Level Poster


Re: Gathering Requirements for a Brand New Project 
Modified By M Prasad - http://mprasad.com  on 5/25/2012 3:19:24 AM)

 Hello Nadia,

Transformation project is very interesting and challenging as well. If the scope of the project is only data migration, and does not involve any changes to the current organizational operational process change then you can view following points.

1) Understand the artifacts required for your organization like documents of business requirement, solutions requirements (including both functional and non-fuctional), stakeholder requirements, data dictionary, glossary

2) Understand the existing organization enterprise architecture, process, governance, policies. These things might sounds a lot but when you approach each one of them at a time, you will enjoy and understand very well as these things mainly requires common and some specialised knowledge.

3) Establish a data migration strategy considering the existing organizational process and systems, such way that those systems are not affected by referencing existing similar data structure.


Kind regards, M Prasad - www.mprasad.com
 
New Post 5/25/2012 6:44 AM
User is offline Tony Markos
493 posts
5th Level Poster


Re: Gathering Requirements for a Brand New Project 

Hi:

First and foremost, understand the maturity of your management.   There is the ideal way to go, but, if you strive too much for ideals, most managers will, in one way or another, derail your efforts.  Always remember, the primary purpose of most BA managers is not to make money for the company but to be comfortable.

Having stated the above, the best approach is to always have in the forefrount of your mind best practices.   You then pragamatically back off of those best practices as political reality dictate.  What would be the best practices?

*  Formally identify and get confirmation on the project scope:  Create  a context diagram.  Then walkthrough it with subject matter experts for verification.    Problem:  This topmost down approach is most often beyond what anyone can do - even very senior level BA's.  So, what i often do is create lower level data flow diagrams first and then summarize upwards into a context diagram.

*  Remember, from an Agile perspective, all that many  projects - even complex projects - need requirements wise is a few data flow diagrams, some entity relationship diagrams, and some screen shots.  The requirements details can be handled by verbal conversations between the developers.

*  Espeically in the first 30 days, avoid the typical mistakes of drowning in an ocean of detail - strive to work at higher levels of abstraction.   Also avoid the trap of focusing on the implementation oriented "hows" vs the unchanging business "whats".

Tony

 

 
New Post 6/13/2012 7:59 AM
User is offline GBusiness
35 posts
9th Level Poster


Re: Gathering Requirements for a Brand New Project 

Thank you guys for your advise!

Nadia

 
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