PMcrunch

Project Requirements Gathering is a complex and challenging activity.  It is also one of the most important activities in project management, as it establishes the baseline against which the product of the project is measured.  Here are some thoughts and ideas on effective requirements gathering for any project.

1. Establish your stakeholders very thoroughly.  Develop categories for types of stakeholders, such as users, support, interfacing in certain areas, managers affected by the project, and more.  Make sure that all areas that the project will touch are represented by a stakeholder.
2. Determine a communications strategy for engaging with your stakeholders.  You will need to build bridges to the stakeholders, and will ideally be able to establish at least one face-to-face meeting with each stakeholder, and ideally at least one face-to-face meeting among all stakeholders.
3. Develop a list of questions, organized around various facets of the problem to be solved by the project.  This list should provide clarification to both you and the stakeholders on the issues to be addressed.  Make sure they address a clear understanding of the problem, as opposed to specifying a solution.  Thoroughly vet the questions within the team and with the project sponsor(s).
4. Determine how much time will be needed, in terms of both sessions and overall duration, for the project requirements gathering.  Develop a schedule for meetings and other engagements as developed through your communications strategy.
5. Do initial requirements gathering by obtaining answers to the questions you have developed.  Whether by survey, face-to-face meetings, online meetings, or one-on-one meetings, you will need to establish a set of raw data addressing your questions.
6. Document answers to the questions in an initial requirements document draft.  Review this thoroughly with all key stakeholder representatives and revise accordingly.  Make sure all stakeholders buy in to these answers.
7. Move into JAD sessions - Joint Application Design/Development.  This is where you will likely engage developers also, and some iterative solution development will take place.  One of the keys to this process is that you will be able to show stakeholders what is possible.  You will also be able to put something concrete out there that will provide a greater point of focus to "smoke out" remaining requirements and clarify understanding.
8. Get formal signoff from all major stakeholder groups.  This is an important process, as it forces some attention by the stakeholders to assure there are no hidden doubts or caveats.

For a terrific personal discussion between Cornelius Fichtner and Hans Jonasson on this subject via podcast, see “Episode 094:  Determining Project Requirements” at the PM Podcast.  Also check out Hans’ book at

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John Reiling, PMP
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