Needs Analysis - Underlying Principles of Needs Analysis

Underlying Principles of Needs Analysis

The following list gives the principles of needs analysis as originally defined.

• User’s need based requirements are complex and can conflict
• User’s need based requirements build a bridge from the business case to the design
• User’s need based requirements help to identify trade-offs that need to happen in the design process (i.e. where a design cannot resolve the user’s need based requirement conflicts)
• User’s need based requirements are there to unify the multi-disciplinary design team; enabling them to meet their business case.
• Formulate and ask questions to do with the business plan that provide an indication of the human aspects of the system, including the relative merit of functionality.
• Always express these findings from the user’s perspective.
• Cross-relate these requirements to each other and to the impactors on the activity.
• Allocate sufficient time during the development process to check and validate your user’s need based requirements.
• Ensure that all user’s need based requirements are derived as low level user requirements before being transposed into system requirements.
• Word your requirements precisely and ensure that you cover all categories of human-related requirements.
• Create test statements to validate the user’s need based requirements, the concept and the implementation
• Prior to freezing your design, validate your user’s need based requirements with users
• Accept that there still may be contradictory requirements
• Understand the nuances of the requirements and ensure that these are reflected in the precise wording of the requirements
• Keep asking your users until you have a true understanding of their requirements
• Elegant design can only be created from understanding the nuances of the requirements