"My customer/product manager doesn't know what they want!" Customer requirements in development projects are often unclear, and there is no suitable specification. However, if you carry out a development project without understanding the customer requirements, this can lead to projects being developed in the wrong direction. In other words, bypassing the customer. We engineers in particular think very quickly in terms of solutions and immediately have an idea of how something can be implemented, even before the problem has been properly identified. Therefore, I recommend that you hold a workshop for a development project to determine customer requirements and, based on this, create a specification. In this article, I will briefly introduce you to the procedure that I use very successfully in projects. The images in the article are from a training course I held on this topic. Not all of the content from the course is covered; I will limit myself to a few images of the flip charts. If you have any further questions or are interested in a workshop, please feel free to contact us.
What is a specification?
Let us begin with a brief overview of the specifications and the definition according to DIN 69901-5.
What does the ideal world look like?
The ideal world map shows how the client and contractor work together. Building on the ideal world, one can then very accurately determine where the sticking points lie in reality.
AG: Client, AN: Contractor, LH: Specification, PH: Specification
The workshop format
A workshop is an ideal means of bringing together the relevant participants and creating the content for the specifications in a structured form.
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| Dipl.-Ing. Goran Madzar, Partner, Senior Systems Engineer E-mail: madzar@medtech-ingenieur.de Phone: +49 9131 691 240 |
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Mission Statement
Starting with the mission statement, the project's mission is defined. This can lead to exciting discussions, and it's not easy to formulate this clearly.
System Context
The system context is the first view of the system architecture and shows the system and the systems and people that interact with it.
System Footprint
The System Footprint is a methodology developed by Maik Pfingsten that is a great way to visualize system requirements. Learn more at the links below.
Conclusion
If you're starting a new project, invest the time in a requirements workshop. In my opinion, this is an ideal introduction to the project, and you'll achieve very valuable results for the project. If you have any questions or need support, please feel free to contact me.