Tool Mentor:
Eliciting Stakeholder Requests Using Rational RequisitePro
Purpose
The purpose of eliciting stakeholder requests is to gather input from any
person or representative of an organization who has a stake—a vested
interest—in the outcome of the project. Stakeholders
might be end users, maintainers of the proposed system, shareholders, technical
support representatives, or others.
Related Rational Unified Process (RUP) information: Activity:
Elicit Stakeholder Requests.
Overview
Stakeholder requests for a proposed system can be gathered through a variety of
elicitation techniques, including interviews,
questionnaires, requirements
workshops, role playing, and so on. (See the Gather Information step in Activity:
Elicit
Stakeholder Requests for a complete list.)
Whichever elicitation technique you use, you should record your results in
one central location, such as a Rational ClearQuest® database or a RequisitePro
requirements document, in order to reference them when defining business and
system needs. (For information on integrating ClearQuest and RequisitePro, refer
to Managing
Stakeholder Requests Using Rational ClearQuest and Rational RequisitePro.)
You may choose to include your elicitation documents with the RequisitePro
project that contains your system requirements, or you can create a separate
RequisitePro project just for elicitation documents and then use cross-project
traceability to link your elicitation results to the system requirements
RequisitePro project.
The techniques you use to gather stakeholder requests may differ from project
to project, depending on your developers' and customers' knowledge of the
system's domain and proposed functionality. As a starting point, RequisitePro
provides a sample Stakeholder Requests outline and a predefined requirement
type (STRQ—Stakeholder Requests) to help you collect stakeholder requests.
You should modify the provided Stakeholder Requests outline and create
additional RequisitePro outlines, as needed, in order to gather additional
input. You may want to create a RequisitePro outline to gather results for each
elicitation technique: one for questionnaire results, one for storyboarding
results, and so on, or you may choose to record these results in one document.
Tool Steps
Because stakeholder requests elicitation may vary for each project, we offer
instructions for modifying the existing RequisitePro Stakeholder Requests
outline or creating a completely new outline to meet your project needs. Begin
by working with the existing Stakeholder Requests outline.
- Add
the Stakeholder Requests document type to your project
- Modify the
Stakeholder Requests outline
- Create a Stakeholder
Requests document
- Create
requirements in the Stakeholder Requests document (optional)
To use the Stakeholder Requests template provided in RequisitePro, you must
add the Stakeholder Requests document type to your project.
Note: To check whether your project already includes the
Stakeholder Request Document Type, select the project in the Explorer, and then
click File > Properties, Document Types tab. If that document
type is listed, you can skip to procedure 3. Create
a Stakeholder Requests document.
To add the Stakeholder Requests document type to an open RequisitePro
project:
- Click File > Properties. The Project Properties dialog
box appears.
- Click the Document Types tab and click Add.
The Document Type dialog box appears.
- Type a document name, description, and file extension. The file extension
is applied to all documents associated with the document type.
- From the Default Requirement Type drop-down list box, select
"Stakeholder Request Requirement Type." If it is not listed, click
the adjacent New button; in the Requirement Type dialog box, type
"Request Requirement Type" in the Name field, complete the
remaining fields, and click OK to return to the Document Type dialog
box.
- From the Outline Name drop-down list box, select the "RUP
Stakeholder Requests" outline.
- Click OK to close the Document Type dialog box.
- Click OK to close the Project Properties dialog box.
For More Information
Refer to the topic
titled Creating and modifying document types (Index: document types >
creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.
You can customize the RequisitePro Stakeholder Requests outline for specific
aspects of your project. Modify the RUP_stkreq.dot outline in Microsoft® Word
(independent of RequisitePro). You can then use your customized outline to
create a new Stakeholder Requests document.
To modify the provided Stakeholder Requests outline:
- Create a copy of the Word template file "RUP_stkreq.dot,"
located in the Outlines directory in your RequisitePro installation. (This
step preserves the original outline for future use.) Name the copy to
identify it as the original file (for example,
"Stakeholder_orig.dot").
- Open the template file "RUP_stkreq.dot" in Word
(independent of RequisitePro).
- Modify this file so that it is specific to your project.
- Click File > Save and File > Close.
Note: RequisitePro must be closed when you make this
modification.
Create a Stakeholder Requests document
in your RequisitePro project, based on the modified Stakeholder Requests
outline.
To create a Stakeholder Requests document:
- In the Explorer, select the package in which you want the new document to
reside. Then click File > New > Document. The
Document Properties dialog appears.
- In the Name field, type "Stakeholder Requests" or another
name to identify the document. (This will be the way you refer to this
document in RequisitePro.)
- In the Description field, type a short description for
the document.
- In the Filename field, type a file name that RequisitePro
will use when saving the document.
- Select the document type you added in procedure 1 (Add
the stakeholder requests document type to your project), which was
based on the RUP Stakeholder Requests outline. Click OK.
- In the newly created Stakeholder Requests document, record the results of
the interview process. You may choose to create multiple interview documents
or combine results in one document. We encourage you to document the
responses of each type of stakeholder you interviewed to ensure that a wide
spectrum of stakeholders is represented in that process.
- Click RequisitePro > Document > Save.
For More Information
Refer to the topic
titled Creating requirements documents (Index: documents > creating) in the RequisitePro online
Help.
The Stakeholder Requests document does not contain requirements
per se. However, you may want to set traceability
links between stakeholder requests (identified in the Stakeholder Requests
document) and product features (identified in the Vision
document). A change in stakeholder requests might affect the definition of one
or more product features. By recording the dependencies between the two, you
will be able to make careful and informed decisions when you prioritize
use cases. By marking stakeholder requests as requirements, you can also use
them in traceability links. (See Activity:
Manage Dependencies.)
To create requirements from stakeholder requests, follow these steps:
- In the Stakeholder Requests document, select the text of the requirement.
- Do one of the following:
- Right-click and select Create Requirement.
- Click RequisitePro > Requirement
> New.
The Requirement Properties dialog box appears.
- Select STRQ as the requirement type. Click the Attributes
tab to modify the attribute values.
- Click OK.
For More Information
Refer to the topic Creating requirements in a document (Index: requirements > creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.
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