Making Agile Requirements Work-No 4
We have proposed that Agile Requirements must be built at a purpose and outcome level, must leverage shared language that communicates context and intent, and must be based on a stable view of the domain. But even with these in place requirements can still fail to support the way people solve problems and the way people learn. When we try to be to prescriptive and communicate too much detail initially it will reduce effectiveness – not improve agility. Agile requirements must support progressive elaboration.
Don’t Support Progressive Elaboration
One of the faulty assumptions made in Requirements Elicitation is that we believe we can know up front exactly what we want. It is also faulty to believe that we should document requirements in too granular detail. In fact, neither of these is accurate. Requirements should support the concept of progressive elaboration. That is, they should be documented so that more specific detail unfolds during the course of the project. This addresses the flaw in both of assumptions. First, documenting what we know at a high level of detail allows us to establish a consistent context that we can communicate in more detail the more we learn. Getting to too much detail early can result in rework and inconsistency in communication.
Agile teams may break requirements into Themes, Epics, Stories, and then Tasks. This may be hierarchical, follow a story-map, or be connected in a mind-map. Themes are be defined early on and directly connected to business value propositions. These are then progressively elaborated into Epics and Stories as needed to feed the team. As Stories move into a ready state for development they can be further broken down into tasks by the development team. This progressive elaboration allows the team to apply what it learns about the best way to deliver the project as the project unfolds. Critically, it also supports the way that people learn about the problem. Too much detail early on can be overwhelming and result in a disconnected or inconsistent understanding of the effort. Not enough detail later on results in a lack of shared understanding of the problem. Progressive elaboration supports effective communication, collaboration in solution finding, and the application of what the team learns as the project unfolds.
Tags: Agile, Big Agile, Business Analysis
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