Week 4: Week too?
Skipped a couple of weeks, but it's just a change in standard.
Doomed from the start
It became apparent at this week's lecture that we (BSE final year project) got is all wrong from the start. Heading out to visit the client with a massive knowledge gap and little requirements gathering experience was a recipe for disaster. I think we knew it at the time, but we let it slide.
12 people all smiling and nodding, taking some sort of notes from vague scribbles to word-for-word exhaustive dictation. We didn't have a plan for the session, we were not prepared and we got out of it exactly what we put into it. We went in without structure and a mind to catergorise, watch for 'pain points', problem/solution space or form/function. Our client didn't know what they wanted but they knew more about it than us, so we were in no position to direct the meeting. Due to this, we followed their lead and that directed us away from a "develop this product for us" type development-based project to a "show us as much as you can about this stuff" kind of research/analysis project. Had we had more domain knowledge at that time, we could've directed them down the develop us a product path and right now we'd have a solid product to do exactly what they wanted in the first place instead of patching together 3 pieces of software to give them a seemingly hacked together product where the most intensive part will be making the GUI solid.
We had little practical training in (or agile methodologies for) requirements gathering. The first exposure to it was when Raj walked into our LSSD lecture and started logically plotting out requirements into categories and laying out a plan for structuring the way you think about requirements. But the damage had been done and we were on a colision course for the situation we're in now. Had we got that initial step right, it may well've got us a solid development project, which would in turn have made the entire project far more interesting and negated some of the motivation problems within the team.
Shows the impact of one early step in the Software Development Life Cycle on a project. Especially as it was related to client interaction.
Doomed from the start
It became apparent at this week's lecture that we (BSE final year project) got is all wrong from the start. Heading out to visit the client with a massive knowledge gap and little requirements gathering experience was a recipe for disaster. I think we knew it at the time, but we let it slide.
12 people all smiling and nodding, taking some sort of notes from vague scribbles to word-for-word exhaustive dictation. We didn't have a plan for the session, we were not prepared and we got out of it exactly what we put into it. We went in without structure and a mind to catergorise, watch for 'pain points', problem/solution space or form/function. Our client didn't know what they wanted but they knew more about it than us, so we were in no position to direct the meeting. Due to this, we followed their lead and that directed us away from a "develop this product for us" type development-based project to a "show us as much as you can about this stuff" kind of research/analysis project. Had we had more domain knowledge at that time, we could've directed them down the develop us a product path and right now we'd have a solid product to do exactly what they wanted in the first place instead of patching together 3 pieces of software to give them a seemingly hacked together product where the most intensive part will be making the GUI solid.
We had little practical training in (or agile methodologies for) requirements gathering. The first exposure to it was when Raj walked into our LSSD lecture and started logically plotting out requirements into categories and laying out a plan for structuring the way you think about requirements. But the damage had been done and we were on a colision course for the situation we're in now. Had we got that initial step right, it may well've got us a solid development project, which would in turn have made the entire project far more interesting and negated some of the motivation problems within the team.
Shows the impact of one early step in the Software Development Life Cycle on a project. Especially as it was related to client interaction.
posted by Vivski at 9:12 AM
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