A requirements clinic is a focused inspection of a set of business requirements, often led by an external facilitator or a third party. The goal is to assess stakeholder alignment on requirements and evaluate the requirements for:
- Completeness
- Consistency
- Clarity
- Contradictions
- Undocumented assumptions
- Requirements gaps
Requirements clinics, when supported by the leadership and facilitated by a professional, provide a substantial value in many scenarios:
- Complex initiatives with a large scope, especially in waterfall methodology or when a requirements package is to be handed off to a third party
- Requirements analysis phase is resumed after a hiatus
- There was a significant personnel change on the project (project or business side, or both)
- The requirements are a combined effort of a team of analysts that have not always worked cohesively
- Project team is geographically distributed
- Previous projects in the organization have failed or had requirements challenges
- The enterprise is undergoing a significant change, whether due to internal drivers (business model change) or external (major market disruption)
Requirements clinics are not just walkthroughs. Think of them as analysis on steroids – analyzing the results of business analysis.
An effective requirements clinic will offer many benefits:
- Find requirements deficiencies and gaps at the analysis stage – save on the cost of rework and changes
- Create supplementary requirements artifacts and models to close the gaps in analysis
- Give an unbiased assessment of requirements risks
- Provide professional support to less experienced in-house analysts
- Promote the culture of peer reviews
- Help create a shared understanding of requirements by all stakeholders
A requirements clinic can be facilitated by a consultant, an experienced business analyst from another project, or a business architect.
It is a wise investment into the success of a project, as well as into the maturity of the business analysis function in an organization.
Why Change Consulting offers requirements clinics as a service – reach out for details.