A 6-Step Guide to be Successful in a Project
Gathering the requirements underlines the process where you identify each step that needs to be completed in detail within your project. The requirement gathering process occurs in the project initiation stage. However, you are responsible for managing the requirements from beginning to end according to your project timeline.
Although requirements gathering is a task that can provide numerous benefits it is often overlooked. Focusing on requirements gathering can prevent the possible issues that may occur during project management and lead you to achieve more successful project outcomes.
This article will explain the requirements gathering process you can manage with Asana in detail!
What Role do Requirements Gathering Have on the Overall Project Management?
The requirements gathering process will allow you to identify what your project requires from the start point to the endpoint. Although you will first have to complete this task in the project initiation stage using Asana, you will have to continue checking and updating the requirements along the way.
Deciding on the duration of your project schedule, which team members need to be involved in the project, and determining the possible risks you can face are three of the most important things you should be considering when creating requirements gathering tasks with Asana.
6 Steps You Need to Follow When Designing a Requirements Gathering Process
1. Assign roles
What you should be doing first is assigning the right roles to the right team members. There will be numerous roles you will have to assign, project stakeholder being the most important one. By deciding on which project stakeholder you want to continue with, you get to underline who will be the one analyzing and assessing your project scope.
Then you will also have to assign project manager, project administrator, tester, or developer roles, as this assignation will help you identify the connection between the requirements and resources according to your project’s goals.
2. Conduct a meeting with the stakeholders
After you have decided on whom you will be working with throughout the project, you will have to arrange a meeting with the stakeholders to get an insight into what they think about your project and its goals. As the stakeholders will invest in the project and you are responsible for creating the deliverables, you need to understand their expectations and requirements.
You can ask some set of questions that will provide clear answers to what the stakeholders think about your project. For example, asking what they think the project’s goal is, what concerns they have about the project, and how they believe it could be successful considering the improvements that could be made or the changes that could be implemented would be a good choice. This way, you can be ready to determine the requirements quickly!
3. Gather the information and write them down
Although this is listed as step three, keep in mind that steps two and three will take place simultaneously. As you asked the right questions to receive helpful answers from your stakeholders, it is time to collect and organize those answers in documentation to avoid losing track!
If you manage to have all the answers you received in detailed and organized documentation with the help of Asana, you can quickly start your project based on the proper requirements.
Using a project management tool at this point, like Asana, will help you keep your project requirements, project management strategies, and plans in one place and will ease the communication between you and other team members. Don’t forget to include all the recommendations, answers, requests, and comments you received from the stakeholders to always be aware of what is expected!
4. Start Creating Your Requirements Gathering Process
Now that you are finished analyzing the information you gathered from the stakeholders, you are ready to create your requirements management plan with Asana.
All you have to do in this step is to use the answers and create the requirement goals based on them.
You can create a timeline of your projects by using the Gantt chart in Asana and then use the chart to demonstrate project requirements depending on the project milestones. You can also identify and assign the roles to the people you want to work with, including the designer, developers, and managers. Don’t forget that it is a must to include team members in the project requirements you created with Asana, because they are the core factors that make this project of yours come alive. Lastly, you can use the risk register feature on Asana to be aware of the possible risks and rank them from the most important to the least important. This way you will be able to conduct a meeting with the team members to talk about how preventing them could be possible. Just like the SMART goals, the project requirements also need to be specific, realistic, and timely. You will have to think as broadly as you can when gathering and identifying your project requirements, to make sure workflow management, team management, and project management all go hand in hand.
5. Get approval
It is time to present or send the project requirements you created with Asana to the stakeholders for approval. You have to make sure that your project planning and its requirements meet the user’s needs. And that the stakeholders can see the compatibility from the flow of your project requirements.
Once you finish formalizing your project requirements and shaping them perfectly, you will have to contact the stakeholders and get your approval! Then you can start your implementation plan by gathering the whole team together and going step by step according to your perfect plan!
6. Don’t forget to keep an eye on the progress!
Lastly, in this process, you always have to check what is going on and make sure everything goes according to your original requirements. At this point, using the project management tool Asana will help you see every detail in your project in real-time!
What Will Happen If Your Stakeholders Don’t Know What is Best for Your Project?
In general, what we do in the requirement gathering process is ask the stakeholders for their knowledge and opinions. However, there may be times when stakeholders don’t have sufficient information about the context of your project or may be in need of another person to bring a different perspective. In such cases, there are some requirements gathering techniques in which you can collect the information you need first.
You can design detailed and well-structured questionnaires with Asana and share them with the stakeholders to save time from talking with everyone individually.
You can also use case scenarios that you can create in Asana and give your stakeholders a visual framework of your project roadmap by including who will be responsible for what, what they will do, and which steps will be taken to achieve the goal. Stakeholders then can have a clearer understanding of your project, deliverables, and goals.
Lastly, you can create prototypes with Asana to show your stakeholders what your project will look like in progress and how it will benefit the company when finished. By creating prototypes and sharing them with your stakeholders, you will allow them to point out what they like or did not like about your project and be able to make rearrangements.
Requirement gathering reduces project costs, increases project success rate and improves stakeholder satisfaction because you get to identify the possible risks before starting your project and plan everything out in detail. Using Asana to create a requirements gathering, will make the possibility of your project being successful close to 100%.
