Why Ask "Why"? Keeping Requirements in Scope

Business objectives are like underwear.

Everyone has them, but not everyone wants to talk about them.  Why not?  Could it be that solutions are so much easier to talk about?  

People often start projects with a solution in mind.  "I need a million dollar grant," a nonprofit client told me.  "Why?" I asked. He looked at me like it was a silly question.  And he was almost right - he was feeding starving children all over the world.  Who wouldn't see the merit of adding a million dollars to his organization?

Business objectives will pass the desert island test.

You can take a million dollars to a desert island, and it will do almost nothing for you. You might be able to burn it long enough to keep you warm for a day or so - if it were in cash.  That's about it.  However, if we can list the resources that the client needs and add up those costs, we get closer to the main objective.  For a soup kitchen, we might list kitchen staff, building materials, food supplies, utilities,  and travel.  Now we have a plan that is at least one level of clarity better than we had before - we could definitely take these things to a desert island and get some business done.


So what will we do with these lower level resources, once assembled on the desert island?  What are they expected to accomplish?  These expectations, once defined, are the true business objectives.  We can assign maximums to food costs, minimums to production levels of kitchen staff, and forecast the growth of the beneficiary population.  It's hard to assign expectations to cash.

Money - like staff and other resources - is usually a means to an end.  A solution is usually designed to fulfill a set of objectives - and asking "why?" will tell you whether that set has been defined.  If the client had no idea how he was going to spend the proposed grant money, for example, that project would be in trouble already!

Why do we need to see the underwear?

The business objective is where the actual business problem or opportunity lies. There are several reasons to keep this in focus:

• Sound solution architecture
  
• System optimization
  
• Project resource prioritization

But before all of that, we need scope definition.  This tells everyone the most important things:

• What we're doing
• Why we're doing it
• When we're going to STOP!

Remember...

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you trace each requirement to a business objective, you’ll find…
You get what you need!