Bite sized training sessions: Objectives & Principles

Objectives
To understand
What objectives and principles are Where they come from Where they fit in to analysis of requirements The importance of objectives and principles

To be able to
Find objectives and principles

Chain Of Reasoning:

Stakeholders

Stakeholders

Drivers

Drivers

Drivers

Drivers

Objectives

Objectives Objectives Objectives Objectives

Change Requirements

Change Requirements

Change Requirements

Change Requirements

Change Requirements

Change Requirements must be assumed to be wrong until they are proved to be right

The big questions who are the project killer stakeholders?

There are a set of people and organisation units that can kill your project They may be obvious and they may not They may not all be killer stakeholders for the same reasons.

project killer stakeholders?

Compliance stakeholders
e.g. Policy, legal, H&S, Audit, external regulators
Rules, requirements, constraints Compliance results

Owner/Manager Stakeholders
e.g. Organisation Owner, Process owner, Product or Service owner

Performance criteria KPI results, profits, etc

Project

Requirements, orders Required service or product

Customers of The solution

(internal and/or external depending on project)

Resource requests

Resource availability

Resource Supplier Stakeholders

e.g. people who can allocate buildings, systems, equipment, consumables, spares, sub-contractors

NB: Expect all stakeholder interactions to come in pairs: typically a request and response.

Drivers
There are reasons why a project exists something has driven the need for it Drivers have driven the project killer stakeholders to sponsor the project These drivers tend to be
Problems the stakeholders want fixed AND/OR Opportunities the stakeholders want to exploit AND/OR Standards/regulation/legislation the stakeholders want to comply with

Drivers need to be analysed

One component of that analysis is defining how the stakeholders know a driver has been addressed

SMART Objectives
How will a killer stakeholder know a project was successful? Answer: the drivers have been addressed How will a killer stakeholder know the drivers have been addressed? Answer: they will monitor/measure something(s) that tells them Therefore, BAs need to know What is being measured What target value means that the drivers have been addressed The target value for a measure is an Objective The Objective needs to be SMART

Question: what is the difference between an Objective and a benefit?

SMART Objectives
But one driver might have many measures one measure might be a measure for many drivers Example: Killer stakeholders could have desires to Increase customer satisfaction AND improve the sales process Net sales per customer might be one of the measures for both. How much must net sales increase as a consequence of the project in order for the project to be considered sucessful? Therefore Identify the objectives in order to deliver the solution to achieve the objectives in order to know all drivers have been addressed

Principles
Suppose a driver exists to improve the customer experience what measures are going to be used?
Customer satisfaction?

A measure that is not measured (cant be or just wont be) and so has no target can be thought of as a Principle Requirements can be defined that contribute to achieving the Principles
E.g. be able to tailor a customer greeting with individual customer details could be justified because it should increase customer satisfaction we wont know if this happens because noone will ever measure it.

The big questions what are the project Objectives & Principles?

Only killer stakeholders can define the Objectives & Principles Killer stakeholders will typically want to define vague Objectiveswhy? There is a 2-way dependency on Drivers and Objectives Not all valid Objectives are necessarily in scope!

Exercise: Define some project driver Objectives and Principles For the drivers you have identified, define some relevant Objectives and Principles The business are available to answer questions.

If you need to make any assumptions, document them.

Time allowed: 20 minutes

Deliverable: flipchart of drivers and assumptions.

Questions?