Dealing with emerging requirements

For a successful end result, everyone involved in the project must understand how the requirements are collected. One of the main causes of project failure is unclear or undefined requirements.

Agile works iteratively. At each stage it is important to clearly define the requirements for everyone. Based on these requirements, a working product is realized in every phase.

When defining those requirements, it is important to realize that there are different types of requirements.

Categories of requirements

The first category of requirements are the known requirements. These are the requirements that users share with us. There are several techniques to collect these requirements. This can be done, for example, by conducting interviews, giving workshops and by asking the right open-ended questions.

No matter how well we collect and analyze the requirements, something is always missing. We don't always ask the right questions. Users sometimes don't think about everything. Perhaps a user interview was not completed or a user was not present at a workshop. It is possible that the requirements were not properly or completely laid down, so that requirements are missed. These are typically the second category of requirements, namely those that are overlooked.

The third category of requirements are the emerging requirements. These are requirements that are found while building the product. Because we demonstrate what has been developed so far, the user comes with new insights. Because we show parts of the product in the meantime, emerging requirements appear. Users find new things that the product should suddenly be able to do.

Emerging requirements are not those that the team should have discovered earlier during a workshop or when conducting interviews. Nor are they issues that users should have identified sooner if they had thought better or longer when asked about what they needed.

We should recognize this category as requirements that we do not know until we confront the user with demonstrations of parts of the product.

Emerging requirements are welcome

In agile processes, we find user feedback so important that we embrace it. No matter how adept team members are at asking questions or how thoroughly users have thought about their own needs, not everything can be predetermined.

The emerging requirements are valuable because the user's creative thinking process only really kicks in once he's seen the early development of the product. It is therefore better not to lay down the requirements in too much detail at an early stage. It is a good idea to wait until there is sufficient user feedback on demonstrations of early implementations. If new emerging requirements are found, other requirements may be dropped or suddenly become less relevant.

Strategy for dealing with emerging requirements

In practice, emerging requirements often lead to projects being delivered too late. Because needs have not yet been discovered, teams often do not take them into account when planning the project.

Emerging requirements cannot be eliminated. The best strategy is to detect them as early as possible in the development process. That means Product Owners need to get their teams working earlier on the parts of the system that are most likely to deliver emerging requirements. For example, it is important to prototype a user interface at an early stage, to test the usability of the system with relevant stakeholders or to investigate what the competition is realizing.

Obtaining emerging requirements early is also achieved by conducting regular sprint reviews. In the sprint review, a working sub-product is demonstrated to users with the aim of obtaining feedback. An agile approach spends more time on the continuous discovery and refinement of emerging requirements.

Agile methods purposefully build and assess prototypes and incremental working versions to find emerging requirements early. As a result, the scope is continuously adjusted throughout the project and the customer has a better grip on the project and the end result.

In conclusion

Agile in Focus has various training courses that help you further in bringing and keeping your project under control.

At Agile in Focus we are committed to help your development organization to be competitive in a rapidly changing market. We can advise you in detail on this. Feel free to contact us, we are ready to serve you.