And in my race to change, to “accomplish” things, and to make meaning, I haven’t slowed down to truly enjoy the present.

And so, as one of my university professors used to say at the end of each lecture, “This seems like a good place to stop.”

Chances are, if your career has landed you in the role of a business analyst, it was probably by accident.

Even if it wasn’t, I’m willing to make another guess: You’ve probably never received any sort of formal BA training, and you’re wondering if there is even such a thing.

How did I do?

The roles of BAs vary, for the most part, based on the size of the company: Simply put, BAs seem to do more in smaller organizations. But in any sized company, I believe that I have observed some traits that are consistent across the most skillful and, dare I say, awesome BAs that I have had the pleasure of meeting.

So, instead of looking at any methodologies behind business analysis (there’s plenty out there already), in this article I intend to examine those characteristics of the awesome business analyst, and point out some specific tools and resources that I guarantee that you can use to make yourself awesome (or awesomer, as the case may be).

In a nutshell, the role of the business analyst is to capture, organize, and communicate large volumes of information.

Let’s start with the capturing part.

Capturing

To record information, you use a computer: You know, that thing you sit in front of all day? How good are you at using it, really?

Learn how to type faster.

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but it astounds me how many people still hunt and peck for letters on a keyboard. At the very least, at this point you should know how to type without looking at the thing. If you’re not there yet, take lessons, or just force yourself not to look at your keyboard; that’s how I learned (and look how I turned out!).

Use technology to take shortcuts.

…after all, that’s what technology is for, isn’t it?

Start by spending less time with your mouse. What you don’t realize is that you’re constantly costing yourself time by using the mouse, especially when you don’t have to. Your mouse has two buttons, and your keyboard has, what, a million? Those magical keys can do so much more than simply put letters on the screen!

Windows has a ton of built-in, time-saving keyboard shortcuts that you may already be using, that work in pretty much any application you use. Here are my favorites:

• First, there’s the old standbys: Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V), and Undo (Ctrl+Z).
• Then there’s some for getting around Windows faster: Switch Between Open Programs (Alt+Tab), Show Desktop (Windows+D), Run (Windows+R), Open Explorer (Windows+E).

Want more? Here’s a rundown of keyboard shortcuts for Windows.

The tools you’re using also have keyboard shortcuts of their own; by all means use them. You can typically find a list of time-saving key combinations in the User Guide.

If you have the ability to, there’s also some tools you can install that will speed things along even further:

• Use a text expander. Texter is one such tool. What this little beauty of a utility does is run in the background as you use other applications, and when you type something like “tss” it expands it to “The System shall”, or whatever you tell it to. The beauty of it is that it works in any application where you type, be it Word, your email, your web browser… or your favorite requirements workbench.
• Use email templates. Chances are you probably bang out a lot of emails that look similar to one another: “You’ll find the answer here…”, or “Talk to the following people about these areas…”. You can use Texter, or Outlook Templates, or even just keep a text file handy (accessible via a shortcut) with a bunch of common responses, to do this. The trick is to not sound like a robot, so be sure to add at least a bit of personalization and warmth to it.
• Search first. Don’t trust whatever filing system you came up yesterday, as that may no longer apply today. While Outlook’s email search capability has improved over the years, it’s still not as lightning-fast as Xobni, or Lookout.

In general, what I’m recommending is to look at the repetitive tasks you do every day, and think about ways you may be able to automate them, or at least ways you can get faster at them. (So, basically, do for yourself what you already do for your business!)

Organizing

As you capture all that information, in all of its various forms, you also need to organize it, so you can later communicate it effectively. But, let’s take care of something, first:

Organize yourself.

Your job requires you to talk to a lot of people in order to discover your business’s needs, and then to communicate them. Unfortunately, this requires time-consuming activities such as those dreaded meetings, and frequent distractions such as constant stream of emails — the combination of which prevents you from actually getting your real job done.

Combat this!

• Manage your time. In particular, guard that time wasted by meetings. Block off your calendar for meetings with yourself. Ask why you end up in the meetings you get invited to. By the same token, don’t waste other people’s time: Provide an agenda, a clear reason as to why you needed certain people to attend (make it clearly optional for everybody else), and aim to end the meeting as soon as you can while still achieving its goal.
• Reduce distractions. This is probably my biggest pet peeve: It’s time to turn off those vibrations, or blasted little pop-ups that let you know you have a new email every five minutes. There’s no reason why you need to know about every email when you can’t act on the majority of them right away; you’ve got your job to attend to, remember? Other tricks such as email filters, and BlackBerry Contact Alerts help to weed out the important people from the noise.
• Manage your tasks. Adopt a task management system. Once you learn a process, it will help not only your professional life, but also your personal one. I’ll defer to an article I wrote on my blog about this. Once you’ve done this, read, and apply the principles of Getting Things Done.
• Manage your inbox. Adopt a dead-simple filing system, such as The Trusted Trio, and discipline yourself.

Get good at structuring your thoughts.

When considering what groceries to buy, you might work through a stream of consciousness, as follows:

“I need spinach, and a couple pounds of cheese. My Mother also really likes that frozen casserole we had the last time she was here. What was it called again? I’ll probably recognize it when I see it. Hmmm. On second thought, I probably don’t need so much cheese…”

Instead of writing it out that way, you take the time to list each item out in a nice, orderly list. Why? Because it’s easy to read, and to check off (process) as you make your way around the aisles. Yet, a lot of communications we receive really is just a stream of consciousness.

How can you make this sort of structured thinking a habit? I believe that it can start with improving the communications you spend the majority of your day writing: Your email.

Here are some of my suggestions for composing better email messages:

• Include the thing you want me to make sure I see at the top of the message.
• If you have several questions to ask, list them out and number them, so I can respond to each one easier.
• Clearly list out the actions you want me to perform.

For more tips, buy a book on writing email, such as this one. (I haven’t read it, but the reviews seem overwhelmingly positive! If you have any to suggest, feel free to mention them in the comments.)

Your good email habits are bound to carry over to the other part of your job: Actually writing requirements.

Communicating

Learn to write more betterer.

Outside of work, and your email client, consider spending time writing about something you’re passionate about.

Start a blog about gardening. Write about your Lego collection. Tell everybody about that time that thing happened.

You only get better at expressing yourself by writing more.

Learn to network.

Your job is also about making connections and knowing the people in your organization.

Connect to other people in your company via LinkedIn. This is an innocent way of saying hello, without really saying hello.

For those of you who consider yourselves introverts, or are just shy about approaching strangers, I heartily recommend Leil Lowndes’ How To Talk to Anyone.

Learn to think in flows.

I’m going to suggest something here that some of you may consider controversial. Are you ready?

Take a simple programming course.

This will, at the very least, get you to start thinking in terms of processes, and breaking down things into a step-by-step, logical series of events. This is a concept that a fair amount of BAs I have encountered have some trouble wrapping their heads around.

Remember that you’re a translator, so knowing both the language of the business, and the “language” of your implementers is vital to bridging that gap effectively.

Learn to think like a designer.

In case business analysts don’t do enough, they also frequently have to play the role of a designer.

In this area, I suggest reading books on user interface design, starting with The Design of Everyday Things.

Another way to look at design is that of “selling” information: Think through how to best present the data you have, and how to make it look good. To help here, pay attention to things like templates you like, to print advertisements in magazines and the layout of designs on bus shelters; examine the fonts chosen, and the structuring of the information it’s aiming to convey.

How Are You Awesome?

I hope you find something in all of this somewhat useful. If you have any of your own tips to offer, please post them below!

Photo by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent)

When you travel you tend to leave a trail of disposable items behind, from food containers, to styrofoam cups, to magazines, to miniature bottles of shampoo. And then there’s the things you don’t see: The exhaust from your plane, or the energy consumed by your hotel room’s A/C while you’re not in the room.

It all adds up, and what’s worse is that we’re leaving an impact on a place that’s not our home. (Although, strictly speaking, the Earth is our home.)

Lately I’ve done so much traveling that I feel guilty every time I hop on a plane, take a taxi, or rent a car (because the businesses I have to go to are nowhere near urban centers).

So I started to ask: If we have to travel, what can we do to lessen our impact on the world?

Here are my thoughts, and tips:

• Question why you’re traveling, in the first place. This first bullet is practically a blog post in itself. For personal trips, try exploring locally. Find out what your city, countryside, state/province, or area has to offer. Otherwise, extend the length of those trips where you have to drive or fly, to maximize the bang for your carbon footprint. For business, technology like WebEx and telephones make it possible to do things remotely; webcams are only making these sessions more personal.
• Try not to rent a car. If you are able, choose a hotel close to your destination, or use public transportation. You may have to do a little more preparation ahead of time, to look up transit routes and such. Google Street View is indispensable when it comes to finding out whether a given area is walkable.
• At the hotel, hang up the Do Not Disturb sign, for the length of your stay. Regardless of how environmentally friendly a particular chain claims to be, not every hotel (or housekeeping person) follows a consistent pattern when it comes to changing towels and sheets. I once stayed at a hotel that changed my soap and shampoo every day. Surely you can get by for a few days without getting fresh towels, and you can make your own bed; isn’t that what you do at home?
• Reuse leftover soap and shampoo. I keep mine in a small ziploc bag in my toiletries kit.
• Turn off the A/C or heat in your room. This is usually controlled by a electronic thermostat, but older hotel rooms need to be controlled directly on the window fan. If you need it, turn it on for short bursts, but remember to turn it off again. People tend to leave it on during the day when they’re not in the room.
• Take a water bottle or travel mug with you. Get used to drinking tap and fountain water. It’s not as bad as you think; less fortunate people in the world survive on much, much worse. Just be sure your bottle is empty when you go through airport security, and fill it up before you hop on the plane. That’s one less cup, each way (at least). While you’re at it, say no to the complementary pretzels.
• Since you tend to eat out a lot while traveling, consider restaurants that don’t require disposable items and packaging, over fast food joints. Other places may offer options, if you ask for them: At Starbucks, if you ask for you next beverage “for here”, and you’ll get your drink in a mug or glass; use your travel mug, if you want to take it with you.
• Purchase carbon offsets. Offsets are like a donation to the environment, but don’t use them to justify your travel. Some frequent flyer programs let you purchase offsets with points.

What tips do you suggest help to lessen the environmental impact of traveling, while still enjoying the benefits that a trip provides?

Photo by chrisjohnbeckett.

So I asked myself a question, as I tend to do when I’m talking to myself: What is the bare minimum list of physical things that I really, truly need?

The key word, once again, is “need”.

At the same time, though, the word “comfort” comes into my mind.

I think the trick is to redefine what us North Americans think of as “comfortable”, and truly challenge what I think I need, in my day-to-day life. Really, shouldn’t four walls and a roof be enough? (This is probably a post in and of itself.)

And so, allow me to pick apart my daily activities, and propose an approach for living minimally that might work for me. To simplify things, I’ll leave out transient, consumable objects like food, cleaning supplies, and toiletries.

Let’s start with the most cluttered area of my home, and go from there.

The Kitchen

Unfortunately, eating requires time, effort, and instruments on hand to concoct, digest, and cleanup after a meal.

Preparing food.

I’m going to assume that any place that I choose to live in will come with a refrigerator, and a stove.

I own a microwave, but I very rarely have a need for it any more. And even in those circumstances, I do have other means of heating food. Hence, it’s not a necessity, and will probably go.

What else one needs to prepare a meal depends on the complexity of what’s being prepared.

Let’s think simple, here:

• pot (1 small, 1 big)
• frying pan
• knife
• kettle
• toaster oven

If I were to open my kitchen drawers at the moment, I would find a plethora of mono-purpose tools: gadgets that really only serve one purpose in the kitchen. I’m talking about lemon juicers, egg slicers, garlic presses, and so on.

The question is, does one need all that, when fundamental tools can accomplish the same thing (even if it requires a little extra effort)?

Eating.

As for vessels for serving meals on, and utensils for eating, not all that much is really necessary, when I stop and think about it:

• plates (2 max)
• bowls (2 max)
• cutlery/chopsticks
• cups (2 max)
• water bottle

Cleaning up.

While I have a dishwasher, I intentionally don’t use it because I feel it’s a waste of resources. Really, then, this should be enough:

• dish rag (reusable)
• scrub brush
• dish rack
• dish towel

The Living Room

The so-called “living” room is the epitome of comfort.

Personally, I prefer to do my living around other people, outside of my home.

My TV, DVD player, and video game things left the picture not too long ago. With the removal of all that stuff, so too goes the need for furniture to put said stuff in, or on: bookshelves, DVD shelves, entertainment units, baskets, and so on.

Now, what of my couch, and coffee table? These are truly staples of any North American household. But something obvious came to light when the main reason for their existence disappeared: I probably no longer need them, either!

I’m beginning to think that this leaves a simpler solution:

• cushions

That’s it. Cushions.

Really, all that’s necessary is something with back support, and something that’s easy to transport. Perhaps a bean bag chair? This is something I need to think about, first.

The Office

I do need a working area in which to earn a living. At a bare minimum, I would like a working surface for my computer. In addition, my current workflow for getting things done requires the use of a filing cabinet, to handle all of that dead tree business.

• table/desk
• chair
• filing cabinet

Technology-wise, I’m very happy the trend has been towards smaller and smaller devices, of which I currently use three:

• laptop
• BlackBerry
• router/hub

The Bedroom

Relatively speaking, the bedroom is pretty simple, stuff-wise:

• bed
• sheets/blankets
• pillow

When it comes to clothes, I really only own just enough. I’ve never had a problem collecting clothes or shoes, so I treat them more as a means to an end.

My closet is big enough for all of the clothing that I own, so no additional storage is really needed.

The Bathroom

Aside from toiletries, not much is really needed here:

• razor
• toilet brush
• towel

Transportation

Living in the city, all I really need to get around is:

• bike
• transit pass

My car — whose purpose at the moment is to collect dust in the parking garage — is a necessity to visit family and friends outside the city. My philosophy, in general, is that I don’t want to place a burden on them to transport me everywhere, just because I choose not to drive.

What’s Left?

A couple items cross my mind as relative necessities, at the moment:

• lighting
• vacuum

As for decorative objects, I think simple picture frames on my otherwise blank, white walls would do. These, of course, would feature photos of family and friends.

Is That It?

Now, I know some of you are going to say “Well Chris, you’ve just minimized any chance of having anybody over for dinner.” Or you’re going to wonder how I intend to live without an iPad.

Fair enough. I welcome any, and all criticisms. And I’m sure there are a couple glaring things I may have missed, and I’m sure there are further opportunities to minimize (do I really need a bed?). I welcome those, too.

But first, I encourage you to stop and think about what it is you truly need. If you were to lose all of your possessions, what would be the bare minimum that you would want to have back? What’s on your list?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Photo by ccharmon.

Where do you begin? And how do you get yourself to actually go through with it?

Here are some things that worked for me:

Don’t panic!

At first, the sheer volume and variety of stuff you have to go through may seem overwhelming. Getting mentally prepared, and getting rid of things intelligently, is going to take some time. So, give yourself the time! In other words, don’t decide to clean out your things right before you move, and don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Make a list, and sleep on it.

What helped me to grasp the quantity of stuff that I had to deal with was to start to create a list of things in my storage locker.

Now, you don’t have to list absolutely everything: Bite it off, one manageable piece at a time, by listing the first chunk of things that you can get to. Just write down what you see. It doesn’t have to be in any particular order, at first.

Now, take the items on your list and break them up as follows: Give/Donate, Sell, Recycle/Trash, and Keep.

Now, sleep on it. Pausing here may do away with some of the first instincts you may have had about keeping certain things. This was the case for me, anyway!

Establish clear next actions for each thing.

Now, to decide what to do about each item on that list.

Give/Donate

If your intention is to give something away, your first challenge is figuring out who to give that something away to. And then you actually have to follow through with it.

First, share your list with friends and family. Some may just jump all over some of the items you now have up for grabs!

Otherwise, depending on what it is, here are some ideas on what you can do with it:

• For books and movies, consider donating them to the library, if they accept donations. Donating to the library had two benefits, for me. The first was that more than one person would be able to make use of it; if I gave it to a single person, on the other hand, they would read/watch it, and then it would sit on their shelf… becoming “stuff”. My thinking also went that if that item was in the library, and if I really wanted to see it again, I could always sign it out. Whether or not that was true, it didn’t really matter!
• For clothing, search for clothing donation boxes. You can usually find these in certain plaza parking lots, though you may have overlooked them in the past.

Take it to an agency such as Goodwill (goodwill.org, goodwill.on.ca). The City of Toronto’s web site has a list of not-for-profit agencies that accept furniture, appliances, computers, clothing, books, and other things; your city’s waste management department may maintain a similar list.

Keep in mind that these places are not dumps — you can’t just drop off anything there. Ask ahead of time if there is something in particular that you think might make for a questionable donation.

Join Freecycle, a mailing list of people posting ads for free stuff. In my experience, it seems to be a gentler alternative to craigslist’s free section.

Sell

My preference was to give away things, versus dealing with the masses on craigslist, Kijiji, or eBay. The selling process slows things down, and kills the momentum. Your preferences may vary.

If your intent is to sell, search first to see what others are selling it for, and how they’re describing it. Now take a photo of the object, write your own sales pitch for it… and post it.

Recycle/Trash

When you put something in the trash, you’re just relocating your “stuff”… to a very permanent place. So if you finally decide that you intend to trash something, please consider the environment before you just throw it out:

• For appliances, search for recycling depots.
• For computers and electronics, I found a particular company in my city that accepts donations of used computers, that they dismantle, and transform into working computers. (For other electronics recyclers in Ontario, check out dowhatyoucan.ca.)

Some people’s first inclination might be to back a truck up to the door, pitch everything in it, and take it to the dump. While, yes, this is the fastest way to get rid of things, this just isn’t smart. So, please, try not to default to the Trash list.

Keep

The things you want to keep need to be set aside, from the rest of your things. I encourage you to continually reevaluate what you’re choosing to keep, lest it become “stuff” again.

Talk about it with others.

I found that sharing this endeavor, and the progress I’ve been making with it, to be rather motivating.

On top of that, other people may see treasure in your trash. It’s how I ended up finding people I could donate or sell a lot of the stuff that I had. As a result, things that I thought would take a while to get rid of — such as my dated TV — turned out to be rather easy!

Try to establish new habits for cutting back on new acquisitions.

Once you’ve minimized a lot of the things that you own, the trick is to put some thought into the new things that you acquire, from here on in.

What methods have worked for you for getting rid of things? Leave a comment below. Photo by rmahle.

Believe it or not, we’ve just completed the first three months of the year. Given this startling turn of events, I thought it would be a good time to reflect back on my New Year’s resolutions, and make sure that they’re still resolutions worth keeping for the next three months.

First, let’s take a look back at January, February, and March of Twenty Ten.

The Last Three Months

Running

When I first started getting out of bed at 5:45 AM, in the dark, donning several layers of running gear, and heading out into sub-zero temperatures, I wondered what the crap I was doing.

Things started off slowly, but I started to adapt. Eventually, I got into a rhythm. I managed to start running three times a week, doing about 6K (3.7 miles) per run. It felt great.

Lately, though, I’ve been traveling a lot for work. So, maintaining this schedule has been a challenge because I detest treadmills, and hotel “exercise rooms” are pretty sucky, in general.

Minimizing

Over the past three months I have sold, or given away my TV, DVD player, Wii, Xbox, Apple TV, and iPod Touch. To the library, I donated all of my DVDs, and very nearly all of my books. Video games have found new homes with friends, and at the local Gamerama.

At this point my friends think my condo is near empty now, or that I’m sleeping in my car. All that’s really changed, though, is that I’ve replaced my TV setup with my bookshelf, and photos of my family. A fair trade, don’t you think?

My storage locker, on the other hand, is now about half empty. I still can’t believe how much stuff I had in there! Intelligently disposing of items has been the challenge, but has been an enlightening one.

Speaking of which, as I’ve gone through the process, I’ve been thinking a lot, and writing about minimizing. This has proven interesting for me, and has made for a great conversation topic with a lot of you. I definitely plan to write, and do more with the subject.

PresentationCamp

On March 23rd, I somehow managed to launch the first PresentationCamp Toronto with five amazing presenters, two-and-a-half hours of presentations, Q&A, and over 50 attendees! While I’m happy with how things went, we saw a lot of potential for more.

Writing

Writing’s always one of my underlying goals to keep active with. Ultimately, I continue to say that I want to make writing a daily habit.

Between posting fairly regularly to my blog, promoting PresentationCamp, and seeing the article I wrote for BA Times receive some awesome feedback, I’m encouraged to continue!

The Next Three Months

So, what’s the current plan for Spring 2010?

Resume Running

Even with all of the travel for work, I must keep up the running, especially if the plan is to run a half-marathon later in the year! I’d also like to start cross-training, which means inserting other types of exercise between my runs — biking is the obvious choice, for me.

I’m not sure how else to keep this up, aside from telling you all about it, and then sticking to it!

On a related note, Past Chris signed up for the CN Tower Climb, which is only a couple weeks away. To be honest, I’m kind of regretting this, as I don’t think I’ll be ready. However, after talking to others who have done this, with little preparation, I think I’m going to give it a go anyway. If you would like to donate to my cause, I would appreciate it. :)

More Minimizing

Venturing back into my locker, I still have a lot of crap to churn through. As far as I can tell, the majority of this is comics, technical books, fantasy novels, and other classic video gaming stuff.

Furniture-wise, I no longer have a need for two CD/DVD shelves (Ikea Leksvik), and I’m also potentially thinking of selling my dresser (Ikea Hopen 4-drawer chest). Any takers? :)

Whatever it is I end up minimizing, you can bet that I’ll be writing about it!

Perpetuate PresentationCamp

PresentationCamp was the beginning of a conversation. Before long, I hope to be looking for volunteers, and speakers for the next one.

Prepare for ProductCamp Spring 2010

The date’s been set for the third ProductCamp Toronto, on Sunday, May 30th at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Business. The last two years of ProductCamps have garnered a lot of positive feedback, so we’re aiming for a couple events this year, along with (likely) a pre-planned schedule, so people know what to expect.

Lay the Foundation for My Next Project

While I don’t see it launching in the next three months, but I do see myself laying the groundwork for my next project, soon.

What is it, you ask? Let’s just say I’m hoping to expand the audience for one of the things I’ve been talking a lot about lately. Stay tuned!

How have you been doing with your New Year’s resolutions?

(Photo on left used under Creative Commons license. “Eye of the Tiger” by varunsuresh.)

Here are my thoughts:

• First of all, really determine if the thing you’re looking to acquire is a really a want, or a need. You probably already know what category it falls into, so this shouldn’t take much thought.
• Put that thing on a 30-day waiting list. I read this trick somewhere, and I like it. If, after thirty days you still think you need the thing, then you probably do. In 30 days, your “wants” will hopefully disappear.
• Consider borrowing the things you want, first. This includes hitting up your friends for stuff, renting movies instead of buying them, and signing out books from the library. If you borrow something and evaluate that you have a need for your own, personal thing, then your purchase decision will be further justified. For whatever reason, I personally grew up feeling like I had to own everything. I frequently bartered with my brother for things that I could have otherwise borrowed; this behavior became part of who I was, well into adulthood. I eventually realized that this was just plain stupid.
• Picture what might happen if you had smaller containers for your things. Living in a smaller space really made me question the place for all of the stuff I owned. This forced me to make some tough decisions (at the time) about what to keep. While this opportunity doesn’t happen often, imagine if you had to move tomorrow. What could you get rid of today to make it easier on your future self?
• Keep a list of the things you buy, and how much you spent on them. (Don’t include regular expenditures, like food.) Review this list when you’re thinking about buying something, to see if those other things you bought that you thought you truly needed at the time are still proving to be a worthy investment.
• Get moral support. Talk to others who don’t have the thing you want. They may be able to convince you that you don’t need to have that thing that they don’t have, either.
• If you currently don’t think in terms of acquisitions as costing you money, start to. Every purchase impacts your bottom line, which you could be putting aside for memorable experiences, or other, more worthy investments (your definition of “worthy investment” may vary).
• Perhaps more importantly, if you currently don’t think in terms of acquisitions as costing the environment, start to. Everything you buy is made from something, and packed in something else.
• Convince others to stop buying things for you that you don’t need, or give them meaningful alternatives. Here are my thoughts on that.

How do you keep yourself from buying things you don’t need?

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was born. I vowed to minimize: To sell, donate, or otherwise get rid of as much of the extraneous “stuff” in my life as I could.

I started with my storage locker: A collection of boxes and blue bins, together in a cage, mixed in with remnants of my past.

Not knowing exactly what was in that locker really was the first sign that I didn’t need all that stuff — it was just taking up space, both physically, and psychologically. As I opened each container I rediscovered movies, books, photos, kitchen supplies, Nintendo games, and other odds and ends that I no longer had a place for.

Over January and February I donated, or otherwise gave away several large servings of DVDs and books, and transplanted other things that I found another home for. I decided to set aside my favorite movies.

As I proceeded, I told the world about what I was doing. It was about this point when my friends thought I was crazy… which only convinced me that I was doing the right thing.

Back up in my condo, I started to look around me. What else didn’t I need? What stuff was distracting me from the things I wanted to do? I started to think bigger.

I had cancelled cable years ago, and over the past year barely played video games. My TV was basically just a stereo, at that point. So I got rid of it. My Xbox, Wii, Apple TV, and DVD player followed.

I reconsidered the movies I had kept. Did I really need them around, taking up space? How often was I really going to watch them? Off they went.

Every time I got rid of something, I felt a great weight lift. Right now it feels almost… addictive. And I’m not done yet.

The great thing is that minimization isn’t just a psychological relief, it can also be an environmental one. Getting rid of things responsibly (such as donating things to the library), and considering the thought process behind acquiring stuff, minimally, also has impacts.

Speaking of acquiring stuff, other questions arose: What’s a need, versus a want? How can one resist the urge to buy something? And then, what constitutes a smart purchase? How can one politely suggest alternatives to others who insist on buying you things?

Minimizing has become rather interesting to me, so stay tuned for more on the topic.

Consider how you feel when you walk by a space in your home that’s filled with “stuff”, be it your basement, a closet, or just a shelf. What are you going to do about it?

The typical requirements document is a long, sprawling piece of literature. Within it, one might find a title page, table of contents, change history, complex headers and footers, legalese, confidentiality notices, and, if you’re lucky, maybe even requirements.

Its length is probably, primarily due to the fact that it tries to be everything to everybody. But, the problem is that this big freaking document isn’t read entirely by any single person, except perhaps by the person who wrote it in the first place.

Every company refers to these documents as something different: BRDs, PRDs, BPDs, DRDs, SRSs, FRDs… or any other number of acronyms that people have forgotten the meaning of. OMG. To complicate matters, each department, project team… heck, person, uses their own template; so, one BRD does not necessarily equal another. But, who can blame the people who write these things? There are deadlines to be met, and all templates do not accommodate the needs of the many. Adjustments are made.

But luckily, from where I sit, I believe that the typical, mega-honking requirements document is nearing its death. And the good news is that this eventuality is closer than most people think. Don’t believe me? We have actually witnessed this happening at some of the more progressive companies that we’ve worked with.

Let’s walk through the reasons why I think these documents exist, and the problems that lie within.

To Communicate

In my mind, your primary job — whether you call yourself a “business analyst”, “requirements manager”, “product manager”, or whatever — is to translate needs from one level of detail, to another. Thus, to be an effective business analyst, you must be effective translator. This means that you must be able to talk the language of the business, and then effectively analyze and formalize that language for the analytical minds of your implementors.

You then need a vehicle to communicate this translation: So, naturally, you go hunting for that mythical template, and set out to write a document.

Let’s then consider what has to be translated. Requirements really come in many different shapes, including:

• flow charts, for describing a series of events, or flow of information;
• lists and tables, for detailing data, and rules;
• images/mockups, for showing what the thing that we’re describing is supposed to look like; and
• paragraphs, for describing what’s left.

One quickly realizes that a single document can’t adequately communicate all of these things. So, what do you do? You go beyond the document, and use a mishmash of the tools you have available: Perhaps you use Microsoft Visio for drawing out diagrams, Excel for lists and tables, PowerPoint for user interface mockups, and Word for everything else. And then you have to try and glue it all together (more on that, later).

At some point you send out the document you’re working on, because communication is a two-way street (a point that a lot of people seem to forget). Unfortunately, documents are designed for one-way streets. So, instead of your reviewers being kind enough to comment directly in the document, we schedule meetings because they don’t know how to make Word work, or they need you there to interpret what you wrote…. perhaps because they didn’t read it. The cycle continues: You change the document, you send it out again, and then you cross your fingers and hope it will be reviewed in some intelligent fashion.

Who’s reviewing these things? The challenge is that there are many people to please, and thus not one, but multiple audiences. Parts of your document are only relevant to certain people: High-level overview stuff is great for managers, but developers could care less about the “Project Vision”; and testers only require certain parts themselves. (Though one might argue that they should read this stuff, in order to provide context for the job at hand).

As a result, there may come a point where you break the document into two documents (at least): One document for business audiences, and another, with a lower level of detail, for a more technical audience.

To Validate Needs are Met

Validation is where I say that what you think I said and what you say I said are the same thing, basically. (Got that?)

To do this, we need to connect the dots, or trace between what was originally said, and what it was translated to. This is also the part where it becomes necessary to add identifiers to everything, so we can reference them and find them, no matter where they are. Basically, all this means is that we end up putting unique numbers next to our requirements.

Ideally, we want to see how all these pieces fit together, so we aim to put everything in one document. In particular, what we’re looking for is how the high-level needs will get addressed at a lower-level, by the implementers. However, if these two things are in two different documents, this makes things a little more interesting; not to mention we already have other objects spread across flow charts, spreadsheets, and slideshows.

This is where the idea of a “Traceability Matrix” comes in, which is not as cool as it sounds. The matrix is a table, created by hand, that shows how the stuff on the left is connected to the stuff across the top. In practice, however, because our documents become difficult to manage as they grow, these linkages begin to fall apart and we forget to update the table.

To Ensure Everything is within Scope

As our project evolves, we also discover that it would be nice to have this thing, and that we might need that thing.

By consequence, it quickly becomes apparent that if we don’t control the size of the big thing that we’re talking about, it will continue to grow, get out of hand, and then dinosaurs will rule the planet again.

Hence, a parking lot is born: This is a table of items that are “Out of Scope” that gets added to the document. This particular table shows us that yes, VP of Something Something, we listened to you (“Look, it’s in the document!”), but no, we don’t have the resources at the moment.

Of course, when the next project comes along, all of these items are buried in that document we worked on last year, and now everybody’s forgotten about them, like fossils.

To Manage Changes to Requirements

Change happens. It’s inevitable. And as you know, keeping track of changes in documents isn’t easy: We have to record these changes, why they occurred, and who made them.

From the reviewer’s perspective, they would like to see a big-picture view of what changed between the last time they saw the document, and what they’re looking at now. Fine. This is where the “Revision History” table enters the picture.

But from your perspective (as the one wrote the document), it might be helpful to see what you had done before you went out to Starbucks after lunch, and promptly forgot everything. In an effort to try to keep a better record of things, we turn “Track Changes” on, and make sure our beloved document in a so-called “content management system”, such as SharePoint.

Great. But what if lots of people are working on this thing? And what if your changes are spread across multiple documents?

To Meet Regulatory or Corporate Obligations

Documents are called into existence for regulatory, and other process-related reasons. In some industries, a process has to be in place, and a document marks a tangible point in this process.

Managers still want to put their monogrammed gold pen’s ink on something tangible, sign on the dotted line, and have everything recorded so that somebody (namely the BAs that report to them) can be held accountable in case something goes wrong… which will happen, because nobody understood, or questioned the contents of the document in the first place.

Hence the list of “Approvers”, with room for each stakeholder to sign and date the document, appears. The signatures on the printed document don’t really mean anything, of course. Instead, this is something we like to call “the illusion of acceptance”.

To Define Requirements Collaboratively

Whether you like your co-workers or not, you have to work with them to gather, document, and translate stuff. (There goes all hopes you had of keeping things under control.)

As you know, building a document with other people is currently not a fun process: Documents are emailed back and forth, opened in Word, edited, comments are added, changes are tracked, you save the document, and then upload it to SharePoint, or email it back.

Recently, newer versions of Word are starting to make it easier to collaborate on documents with other people. Of course, reality tells us that even though these features are becoming available, your company’s culture, and IT department, isn’t moving as fast. (If you’re like most large companies, you’re probably stuck on Office 2003. If you’re not, consider yourself lucky!)

The Death of the Requirements Document

So, what can we do to get rid of the big freaking requirements document? What’s needed is a solution that addresses the reasons as to why they exist, namely:

• To Communicate. We need to be able to express requirements in various forms, in one place, not across several tools. We should also be able to present/split/deliver what we have, based on the audience we’re talking to.
• To Validate Needs are Met. We must be able to tie needs and their detailed requirements together, through traceability. However, this should be a by-product of our work, not something we have to manually create and maintain. We should also be able to illustrate and animate to help communicate, and not just depend on legal-style paragraphs of text.
• To Ensure Everything’s Within Scope. We should capture various levels of scope in one place, and only show what is needed. (Don’t keep them separate.) Being able to easily see the relationships between all the detailed stuff, and what higher-level stuff it came from helps us to ensure that everything is within the agreed upon scope, as well.
• To Manage Changes to Requirements. We should be able to manage change, see those changes over time, at checkpoints, and drill down to specific changes, as necessary.
• To Meet Regulatory/Corporate Obligations for Documentation. If possible, we should be able to move through an approvals process, without the need for a document. However, we should be able to generate a document if, and when it’s needed.
• To Define Requirements Collaboratively. We must be able to allow multiple people to work together, without tripping over each other.

In the end it’s become clear that writing down, and drawing out requirements in documents just isn’t working.

The funeral for the big freaking requirements document must happen, if we are to move forward.

In Conclusion

Documents have been the de-facto standard way for working with requirements for years.

And given our discussion above, is it any wonder that software project success statistics are so dismal? (Some statistics suggest a 33% project success rate!)

Technology now exists that allows us to meet, and exceed all of the things that we had hoped documents would do for us, namely help to communicate, validate, manage scope, record changes, keep us compliant to regulations, and provide a collaborative medium for defining requirements.

It’s time to let go of the security blanket. Big freaking requirements documents must die!

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