How To Find Requirements

Lately I have been working on getting the requirements for a product from the customer.  I find that gathering those requirements is a critical piece of the puzzle for project success.  Many a project goes bad because of either a lack of requirements or the wrong requirements.

Gathering requirements is not easy, the customer is busy and the customer may not even be the end user.  There are a couple methods that I use to get those requirements.

The user survey is one method.  This method is a little hands off, but it can provide very good insight especially if the questions asked are open ended.  Additionally, there has to be followup sometimes and that might pose difficulties if the end users are at distant locations or if they are otherwise not available.

The other method that I use is extensive interviews.  These interviews are used to drill down to the essence of those requirements.  Sometimes you have to ask the question "why" to make sure you get the real reason for the requirement.  It is not enough to take those requirements at face value, because this is usually only focused on the pain of the moment and not the root cause of the issue the product or project is intended to solve.

Requirements gathering can be difficult and confusing.  Bad requirements is one of the reasons that projects fail.  This stage is critical for project managers and the project manager should devote the time to truly understand the requirements.