Requirements A Saga

A month ago, I was handed over few docs by execution team which they had got from the business, and termed that as requirements.
The motive of documents was to provide insight, so that some proof of concept can be produced in response of RFP. The requirements were easy and straight forward and we were able to get to one of the pain point and by targeting that we were able to produce some results.
As the results were announced, we indeed bagged the deal and for the next level, we had to fly to meet the customers.
What happened thereafter could only be described as adventurous experience and deep dive to unknown.
As we reached there, there was some JAD session organized by the project owner team from the business side, which had around 30 participants.
With our knowledge of those documents which were provided at time of POC, we had our expectations set that JAD will produce more insight to whatever was written in documents and whatever small doubts we do have will be cleared out.
We were sitting in middle of the 30 odd business functional leads, which had great expectations from us and they were taking about the business, framework, and solution etc and we were having a very hard time in spotting that in the documents.
What was said during the JAD had his roots in the document, but it was only the root, rest of the eucalyptus sized tree was missing and they were spelling something about leaves their color, and not talking about branches etc.
In that whole week, we had 19 sessions expanding 3 hrs each describing various aspect of the solution to be built and before we could take a single breath it was over.
After first week, our achievement was….we knew they want solution of which they have spelled something in the document and rest we are not sure how we can get it.
We were in situation where the business and our upper management had in their mind, that we had everything crystal about solution.
A question came in my mind……….when does a user story can really be qualified as a requirement?? Or the requirement is just a myth which is realized only when we come to execution of it??


In other term when is requirement a requirement??


Next week we started with fresh mind with newer prospective to this all, with one understanding that business has one product and wants us to make framework by which various variants of this product can be made and variants may also have different taxonomy and base tan the existing product.
In other words, build a capability framework by which a business user can spawn a new product by using simple tools provided by the system, and can administer it without need of the developer.
The following week after JSD session, we met project owner team from business to understand their side of story on the solution and deeper understanding of existing system.
What they talked did strengthened our understanding of what is expected but they showed us the view bigger than satellite view of the newer system and whenever we talked of something specific or make sure we are at least at the satellite level, they talked about what they had today and wanted something better than what today was.


Business Analyst can sew only small holes, but when business requires BA to work on cotton plant and build that dress, BA feels little helpless.


We were sensing something strange, what the business wanted was infinitely flexible and configurable plat form which can perform any trick with some clicks of mouse.
I tried to ask to me as well as business, is it functionally possible let alone the technical feasibility. When sitting on the dining table if the number of silver is more than three, one often gets confused, for the given item which silver shall I use?


Execution team requires specifics on how work would be done and cannot work in unknown


To Be Continued…..