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March 22, 2006

A New Way To Think About Requirements

All progress does not result from meeting requirements. Sometimes, luck prevails, and the conditions in which we were laboring simply change to our advantage without being influenced by us. But all requirements are considered meaningful because they indicate a path to progress. Although competing definitions of progress may exist, no one debates the purpose and virtue of setting requirements.

Defining requirements is difficult. The empirical contrast of results from carefully defined requirements versus ill-defined ones has demonstrated that, and also shown that the cost of failing existing expectations easily wipes out the apparent value of isolated progress. This setback happens when it is unclear where expectations are coming from, and/or when the activity develops new circumstances without certainty of being aligned with the expectations of record.

The frustration of unstated expectations or of ones that have changed or appeared without warning may be a legitimate feeling -- but that in no way exempts the failure from the oversight or purpose of management.

Although change management is successful as a remedy and is ready for use from the start, it comes late in the proceedings.

At the start, the more important and urgent instrument is a model that allows comprehensive discovery of expectations, in a way that allows them to be processed into requirements. Shown below are the four main categories of expectations, ordered to help reveal the multiple perspectives that result in requirements being adequately defined. The categories of expectations -- responsibility, organization, resources, and objectives -- are obviously reflected in most systems of accountability.

Yet it is typical that even knowing the accounting systems, confusion or obscurity develops between what gets done and what is expected.

This problem is most often referred to as a "gap" of some kind -- for example a gap between strategy and execution. But that reference is probably erroneous in two ways.

First, it is production, not execution, that normally gets measured against strategy and coughs up a "gap" between the intended and the actual. (Execution is not about the results. Execution is predominantly about the decisions that generate actions.)

Second, as represented in the model here, the key problem of developing progress is worked out through systematically and iteratively deciding potential values, not compliance, to be leveraged from execution's direction. Implementation proceeds moment by moment through reality, constantly asking the question "what difference will this next item make?" and adjusting its navigation accordingly. In answering, the point of view on that progression sequentially escalates from strategy to achievement, to performance and then to outcomes. The expectations at any one of those steps can trigger a reworking of the previous step. And the implementation does not "finish" but rather continues cycling through the four steps, until the risks outweigh the benefits.

That suggests the importance associated with translating facts about events into facts about states -- which not surprisingly is a huge business, built on faith in causality and an appetite for analysis.

On the other hand, translating expectations into progress is what is really mandated and is always being attempted. This translation demands concurrently managing construction, integration and target deltas (change) -- the main elements of production activity.

The model of progress shown in this discussion assumes a sensibility most like "implementation" (i.e., synthesis rather than analysis). The model's synopsis of "implementation" is that expectations become intentions, which become behaviors, which become events:
- execution formalizes expectations as "intentions"; namely, missions, plans, functions, and operations
- those intentions are used as instruments of execution, to determine the institutional "behaviors and effects" recognized as strategy, achievement, performance and outcomes.
- those behaviors cooperatively drive events, and are interrelated and assessed by general perspectives representing factors of change, such as What, Why , How and Which. These factors may be expressed both as preferences (future) and as facts (current or past).

As a result, "gaps" may appear between the "intended" and the "actual" for any of the effects -- but the progression of management attention from strategy to achievement, to performance and outcomes does not change in order, and outcomes regenerate strategy, closing the loop of influence.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at March 22, 2006 8:27 PM

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