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Gathering Business Requirements

In working with companies defining Industrial Internet projects, we have consistently found that the line of business leaders can articulate what information they need to run their portion of the business. They also usually understand what their competitors are up to, and have a vision of how their business must compete now and in the future. So, they have the business viewpoint that we described in the previous chapter.

That said, the line of business leadership hasn't always understood what technology could do for them in helping fulfill their business needs and vision, especially as they consider projects of this type for the first time. So, they need some help in establishing a usage viewpoint.

Of course, if the leadership you are working with are unconcerned about competitive threats and have fallen behind in their understanding of business changes that are occurring, the company has bigger problems than technology alone can solve. When IT or technology consultants bring Industrial Internet solutions to business leaders who are unaware of these new threats to their business, there is likely to be little real interest. The odds that they will see innovations driven by an Industrial Internet technology project as useful and something they will want to fund are greatly diminished.

Fortunately, in many companies, lines of business leaders are aggressively seeking ways to optimize old business models, create new business models, and gather new sources of information to help drive these efforts. They have a good notion of the sort of data that they need and understand the state of the data that they currently have.

When such companies are focused on innovation, we often find that business leadership no longer sees their IT organization as their only option for a deployment strategy when they want to invest in Industrial Internet solutions. The availability of cloud-based platforms and solutions brings new options. It can be relatively easy today for a line of business to work with a systems integrator to deploy a cloud-based solution. This tactic is often followed when business leadership has found IT unresponsive to their rapidly evolving business needs.

In companies where IT is part of the innovation process, they are close collaborators with the lines of business. There are typically ongoing joint meetings and planning sessions. Some companies create centers of excellence to speed up this process.

A unique role is sometimes created that is focused on the gathering of business requirements. Referred to as business architects, these people help lead the definition of future business technology solutions. They provide an important bridge to more technical architects within IT and share business requirements with them while providing guidance on how to make sure that technical proposals stay aligned with the business solutions envisioned.

The process we will describe in this chapter to gather business requirements is one that we've led in many organizations. We've also observed many organizations using similar processes independently of our involvement. Over time, we've refined our own techniques based on the lessons we've learned ourselves and from others.

As we take you through the process in this chapter, we'll describe the following major steps:

Preparing for business discovery
Gathering critical success factors (CSFs) from various business stakeholders
Capturing potential business benefits if the solution is built
Uncovering the KPIs needed to run the business
Gaining an understanding of the skills of the business users and analysts
Evaluating existing and proposed data sources
The value in building early mock-ups or PoCs
Prioritizing the stages in the build out of the project(s)
Building the business case
Selling the project

We'll provide you with examples of the collateral that is built and shared using this approach. For those of you deep in IT and technology, this might seem to be beyond your area of expertise and out of your comfort zone. However, if you are concerned about reconnecting IT with potential business sponsors or spending less time on dead-end projects that go unfunded, this approach will help you.

We also have some important pointers before you start this process to put you into the right mindset. Technology folks sometimes have the mistaken belief that business leaders and analysts expect you to know everything about their business. They realize you don't. They are coming to you for advice on how to align their requirements with potential technology solutions. So, our pointers are as follows:

Spend most of your interviews with business folks listening to their needs
Don't jump to solutions--in fact, push back if they ask you to propose solutions before you have gathered enough information and instead seek more details about the business drivers and needs
Don't raise objections when they describe what they want to do (such as it will be too hard or expensive or that you are too busy); if they've heard similar objections from IT in the past, you must try to overcome that perception
Don't be surprised if they start sharing the most significant issues that they face after you've gained their trust and proven that you are truly listening and documenting their input
Don't be afraid to ask what the potential business benefits will be if a solution is built
Ask if they have already implemented workarounds to get the information needed to make the business decisions being discussed, and don't criticize those techniques

In a sense, you are playing the role of a detective. Gathering clues and piecing together what is really happening and what is needed to solve business problems is your focus at this stage.