23 November 2011

Practice Makes Perfect – Requirements Engineering Training



When I was young my mother decided I should take piano lessons. I was five years old and barely knew my ABC’s. My teacher was an older woman who sat down my first lesson and played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for me. I was so impressed. I wanted to play that piece right away. An impossible goal, of course.

There was so much I had to learn before I could play that piece. I started with one hand (one hand, are you kidding????) and learned three notes on my first lesson. Then three notes on the left hand. Then five notes. I remember thinking this would take forever. And so on. It was many years of learning and practice before I was able to play Beethoven’s Sonata.

There were some key things I had to learn to do. First, I had to learn how to hold my hands properly. Then I had to learn to read music – a few notes at a time. Then I had to learn how to read the music and then play it. And, above all, I had to practice. I practiced at least an hour every day, more in the summer. And still it took five years for me to play that piece. My teacher was instrumental in that process. She taught me techniques. She corrected me when I made a mistake. I could not have learned to play the piano without her.

So let’s tie this to Requirements Definition and Management. Asking someone who’s never written or managed requirements to follow a robust and complex requirements process is like asking that five-year-old to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. And since we often don’t provide any training or mentoring, let’s ask them to learn to play that piece on their own. That’s what we are doing when we throw our analysts into a complex requirements process.

I suggest we consider training our analysts. Let’s stop thinking we all just “know how to do our job”. It isn’t true. We can learn to play that piece on our own. I would suggest instead of taking five years, it would have taken me ten years on my own. And so it is with our requirements engineers and analysts. We can let them learn on their own. Or we can give them some training, mentoring, and time to practice.

Of course, key to making this work (no pun intended) is having some kind of process defined that we use to train our analysts. I used to hate that “process” word, but it is important. Here are some suggestions for turning your new requirements analysts into expert requirements analysts quickly.


  1. Provide training for your analysts around your specific process, using your requirements and deliverables, so the training is more real.Generic classes around requirements definition and management are great, but they must be in line with the processes you are following in your organization.If you are working with an outside consultant, expect that there will some effort in customizing the training for you.But it will be worth the investment.
  2. Assign a mentor to your new analysts.Let someone who has “been there done that” and has the wounds and scars to prove it help the new analyst and show them the ropes.This will help eliminate that “tribal knowledge” thinking.Let them assist in elicitation sessions, review requirements documents with the analyst, and be a resource for them.
  3. Let the analyst practice. That may not seem too practical. But don’t start a new analyst on a project that is critical to the company. Or one that has so much history and controversy around it that it will be difficult to move forward. Let them “practice” on a simple and well understood project to get their feet wet.

I believe the following statement is true.

“Good analysts are grown, no trained.”

Let’s grow some good analysts.

By: Marcia Stinson


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