Checklist manifesto part two - requirements gathering

This posting is a continuation to Checklist manifesto. In that post I discussed how the concept of checklists can be applied to IAM projects on the overall delivery methodology level. Lets talk a bit about how check lists can be used in the different parts of the delivery methodology.

Lets assume that you are using a classical waterfall. This gives you the following steps:

1. Requirements gathering
2. Design
3. Implementation
4. Test
5. Go live
6. Maintenance

In this post I will focus on how you would user checklists in the requirements gathering phase.

One thing I have noticed over my IAM implementations is that if you take a use case driven approach it seems like most provisioning projects will contain almost the same use cases. Depending on how you slice and dice your cases and what your scope is you usually end up with 30-50 core use cases which tend to cover the same subjects.

The use cases may be very different as each and every company seem to like to do things their own special way but you will cover the same overall business process.

This means that a mature implementation organization should be able to come up with a list of use cases that can be given to the more junior resources that will perform the actual requirements gathering. If you are a customer I would definitely include this as a question on the RFP. If you are a junior resource I would speak to your seniors and check if they don't have a list of use cases on their hard drives or if they quickly can create one based on their previous projects.

More about my experiences in the lovely world of requirements gathering can be found in the post UAT and requirements gathering.