What Requirements Analyst Is Responsible For
A requirements analyst must:
Identify requirements. The requirements for the software product do not lie in plain sight and do not wait for the analyst to come and collect them.
A professional analyst helps users clearly define the system functions that they need to achieve business goals. For that to happen, he uses multiple ways of gathering information:
- Interviews.
- Seminars.
- Document analyses.
- Polls.
- Visiting a lot of customers at their workplaces.
- Business process analyses.
- Workflow and task analyses.
- Lists of events.
- Analysis of competing products.
- Study of existing systems.
- Historical information on previous development projects.
As a rule, app users pay special attention to the functional requirements for a system, so engaged in the discussion with project participants they should debate about quality attributes, performance tasks, business rules, external interfaces and restrictions. It is normal if the analyst argues with users about something, but you should not impose your views on them. Some user requirements may seem absurd, but if the client claims that they are true, it is better to give in to him.
Analyze the requirements as carefully as possible. Look for derivative requirements that arise logically from customer requests, as well as unspoken expectations that customers believe will ever be implemented anyway. Immediately clarify the vague and unconvincing words that generate ambiguity. Offshore software testing is what you think of when running out of time, money, resources to conduct full-fledged testing of developed software programs.
Identify conflicting requirements and areas requiring detailed elaboration. Define the functional requirements with the degree of detail that is specified by the developers. The degree of detail differs from project to project. E.g. for a website, gradually created by a small and friendly team, it is enough to have documentation containing an incomplete list of requirements. On the contrary, to develop a complex embedded system that will be built by an external vendor, a complete and detailed software requirements specification will be necessary.
Create requirements specifications. As a result of the requirements formulation, a collective view of the system is formed. The analyst is responsible for organizing the specifications, in which the view is clearly defined. Due to the use of standard templates for product use cases and software requirements specification, the process of developing documentation is accelerated, as the analyst always has a list of topics that need to be discussed with representatives of users.