Gather requirements

Now that you know the project’s goal, objectives, and strategy, it’s time to write down what the project must do, or “requirements,” which are what the project needs to do. Getting the job done right is very important. If you don’t figure out what the project’s true needs are, the stakeholders won’t be happy with the project’s results. It will also take longer and cost more if you add things that aren’t necessary to the project. One goal for the hospital scheduling project is to cut back on rescheduling procedures by 75%.

One job for the scheduling system might be to make sure that all the people, equipment, and facilities that are needed for a procedure are set up at the same time. Another thing you could do is look for a time when all the things you want are available again. These rules are both important and very specific. You can make them even more detailed.

Gathering requirements can be hard. Stakeholders might not describe their needs correctly or give conflicting or contradictory needs. They might leave out things they need or add things they would like to have. There are times when people who aren’t involved in your project try to get their ideas into it. In addition, many stakeholders don’t want to spend the time it takes to write down what needs to be done.

There are a lot of ways to find out what people need. Interviews are one way to do this. The most important thing is to interview the right people and come up with a list of questions. If your project involves a lot of different people, try brainstorming sessions or focus groups with people from each group to talk about the project’s needs. These meetings may help you get support from the departments that go to them, so you can do more things. Another way to learn about how people work is to watch them. Look at how people do in their everyday lives.

To make sure that the requirements are correct, write them down, and talk about them with the people who work on them. Questionnaires and surveys are another way to get requirements from people who work on the project. These documents should be built carefully so that the questions don’t influence the answers people give. If there is already documentation or results, you can figure out what needs to be done by looking at documents or figuring out how things work by looking at them. Next, you need to look at the first set of requirements to see if they make sense.

The information you need might not be there, or there might be requirements that aren’t the same or don’t match up with each other. After you do some research, go back to your stakeholders and ask them more questions and make sure they understand what you said. Getting the real needs of a project can take a lot of time.

Finally, the rules will start to make sense. When that happens, it’s time to write down what those requirements are. Make sure everyone understands the rules by writing them in a clear way that everyone can read. Putting requirements into groups that are related can help you avoid duplication and conflicts.

Requirements are detailed descriptions of what a project should do, so it’s important to get them right. When you do this for practice, think about how you might get the information you need for the project about hospital scheduling and how you might deal with any problems.