User Requirement for an IT System

¶ … Customer Requirements Documents The most critical aspect of managing any information technologies (IT) project is ensuring scalable, reliable change management programs are in place to provide those most affected by the new systems with assurance that their jobs and roles are stable and safe. Writing effective customer requirements documents needs to take into account change management requirements and needs to ensure the system(s) being produced align perfectly with user's needs (Patanakul, 2014).

Writing any customer requirements document needs to first focus on change management, as that is the single largest cost of any IT project and often the most unpredictable as well (Dey, Kinch, Ogunlana, 2007). In defining the categories of customer requirements in this analysis, all integrate back to and support the goal that all successful IT projects are galvanized around, which is ensuring resistance to change is minimized and change management efforts excel (Sharma, Stone, Ekinci, 2009).

The following phases are needed to complete a user requirements specification: Phase I: Complete An Assessment of the Customer's Company and Develop A Strategic View of Background Systems and Processes. This first phase needs to include completing a thorough assessment of the customer company's IT systems, business models and key stakeholders. A thorough analysis of stakeholder requirements needs to be completed in addition to an overview of current and future strategic IT plans.

Defining a needs matrix and strategic planning framework for determining how IT systems will enable the company to attain its goals also needs to be completed. Phase 2: Problem Analysis and Assessment. The goal of this phase is to determine what the most urgent problems the client's company needs to resolve and what role IT will play in solving them. Advanced quality management and total quality management (TQM) methodologies are often used during this step of defining customer requirements.

The most important series of tasks to be completed during this phase center on quantifying the requirements of customers from a problem resolution standpoint and providing a roadmap of how current and future IT systems will resolve complex problems, giving the client company the opportunity to reach their goals. Phase 3: Competitive Analysis and Opportunity Definition.

Provides the client with an overview of their position in the market from a current and future competitive perspective, including a thorough SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, in addition to pricing and services comparative analysis. Based on competitive analysis, opportunities are defined and prioritized based on internal resources, IT system support and the potential for additions to existing business operations being achieved with a high degree of synergy.

Phase 4: Change Management Initiatives and Strategies Requirements Definition (Business FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS PHASE) -- This is the most critical phase of any customer requirements document effort. The key requirements that need to be captured for any IT project to succeed must start with the users' or customers' requirements and needs. Just cataloging those needs however is not as effective as interviewing users about the specific requirements they have, and studying how their workflows can be accentuated and accelerated over time through the use of ergonomics (Dey, Kinch, Ogunlana, 2007).

By concentrating on collecting change management requirements and needs from this perspective, the contextual needs of users are taken into account, which are far more valuable than the unidimensional aspects of just looking at a list of requirements in isolation (Sharma, Stone, Ekinci, 2009). Cisco's approach to requirements planning for change management centers on ergonomic analysis of workflows, definition of data elements and preliminary integration of data workflows to support a unified reporting and user experience architecture (Lopez, 2013).

Cisco has the resources to assign ergonomics experts, many of which have advanced degrees in human factors engineering, to improve inter- and intradepartmental workflows across their largest enterprises' customer sites (Lopez, 2013). In defining customer requirements.

It's imperative to focus on the following factors: accessibility and agility of data sets needed for completing a given series of analytical, reporting and corrective action tasks; the development of reporting and query tools for tracking overall system effectiveness; surveys to measure user satisfaction with specific systems and their overall performance; and financial metrics that seek to quantify the value of ergonomic modifications to existing workflows and their resulting impact on company financial profitability (Lopez, 2013).

Defining customer requirements at the change management level is essential for creating an effective strategy for navigating system and design-level decisions that directly impact profitability over the long-term. The bottom line and lesson learned from Cisco is that change management considerations need to be taken into account when creating a series of system and IT architecture requirements if they are to succeed over the long-term.

Phase 5: Customer Requirements Capturing and Analysis (NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS) - Specific feature requirements are different than change management requirements, in that the former are feature specific and the latter are focused on workflows. The customer requirements are often defined by their functional groupings, with specific attention paid to their integrative requirements to reduce risk (Dey, Kinch, Ogunlana, 2007). Examples of integration-level customer requirements necessary for reducing risk include legacy system, database, customer records, and extensive transaction records management (Doherty, 2014).

Customer requirements also are in the areas of user interface, user navigation, and functional application requirements to the feature and option level. Often the customer requirements are the longest section of a customer requirements document. Mobility is another.