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How do you deal with special problems that arise during group requirements collection sessions?

Question:

  • Group interviews and JADs are very powerful ways to collect system requirements, how do you deal with special problems that arise during group requirements collection sessions?

Tom Haughey's Answer:

  • Here are some practices that I have found useful.

    • Prepare, prepare and prepare. No matter how casual your delivery, your preparation should be thorough. Prepare even your adlibs.
    • Use an experienced facilitator. Facilitation is part science, part art. The more aggressive the group, the more experienced the facilitator should be.
    • Do interviews and gather information before conducting the facilitation session. Get a good understanding of the issues and needs before the session itself.
    • A facilitator should control discussion to ensure it stays on target.
    • I prefer a semi-structured agenda consisting of six to 10 general points for a one-half day session. This encourages brainstorming. Brainstorming is the spontaneous contribution of ideas in a synergistic environment. Unstructured sessions can be frustrating due to absence of control. A disorderly session promotes “bullstorming!” Fully structured sessions inhibit creativity and synergy.
    • I recommend you do not model during business-oriented facilitation sessions. Collect the data, go off and model it, and then show it back to them. Consider one-half day sessions rather than full-day sessions. People get worn out in a full-day session and often spend a lot of time answering voice mail around 2:30.
    • Build and distribute an agenda.
    • Know your deliverables and structure the session to answer the questions needed to produce that deliverable. A JAD for data is different than JAD for process, but of course you can combine both.
    • Start off with a short five to eight minute explanation of what will happen in the session, the goals, the rules and the expected deliverables - all in simple terms. In other words, tell them what you will do, tell them how you will go about it, illustrate to them a sample deliverable, and show them some sample discussions.
    • Maintain your sense of humor.


Tom Haughey is the president of InfoModel LLC, a training and consulting company specializing in data warehousing and data management. He has worked on dozens of database and data warehouse projects for more than two decades. Haughey was former CTO for Pepsi Bottling Group and director of enterprise data warehousing for PepsiCo. He may be reached at (201) 337-9094 or via e-mail at tom.haughey@InfoModelUSA.com.

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