requirements are sitting out in the open, she says,
like berries waiting to be picked. Requirements
elicitation means posing the right questions to get
the needed information. Visual models can help
project practitioners understand what those questions should be—and which stakeholders should
answer them.
Ms. Beatty likens the process of eliciting require-
ments to building a house. “You can build a house
without talking to the people who are going to live
in it, but you’ll build a better house if you did.”
A project doesn’t have to be reduced to just one
visual model. While every house, for example, has
the same basic components—four walls, a roof
and a door—a feature-tree model could diagram
residents’ speci;c needs. ;e model’s trunk rep-
resents the house while a branch represents each
bedroom, with smaller branches describing the
room’s size, the type of ;ooring and so on. From
there, a process-;ow model could map out the
steps for the contractor, from hiring subcontrac-
tors to applying for permits to procuring materials.
Even blueprints are a visual model, Ms. Beatty says:
“Here’s the ;oor plan, here’s the electrical, and
to inaccurate requirements gathering, according to
PMI’s 2015 Pulse of the Profession®: Capturing the
Value of Project Management.
“;e value of a picture is that it’s a neutral, agnostic language,” says Howard Podeswa, CEO of Noble
Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. “It draws a logical
connection between things.”
PICTURE THIS
Modeling might seem like an extraneous, time-
consuming activity, but spending a bit more time
up front can save time in the end. “When people
think about models, they sometimes think, ‘I don’t
have time, I can barely get the requirements done,’”
says Joy Beatty, vice president of SeiLabs at Seilevel,
Austin, Texas, USA. “But you should take that time
to do it now, instead of having to do it later.”
A visual model doesn’t have to be a great work of
art. “You can use templates and frameworks,” Ms.
Beatty says. With each initiative, project managers
can customize those templates.
Rather than using the standard term “
requirements gathering,” Ms. Beatty prefers “requirements
elicitation.” ;e word “gathering” suggests that
“The value
of a picture
is that it’s
a neutral,
agnostic
language.
It draws
a logical
connection
between
things.”
—Howard Podeswa,
Noble Inc., Toronto,
Ontario, Canada
Feature trees organize features into groups,
capturing the entire scope of a project in a
single, high-level visual model.
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