Requirements Engineering & Discovery

Maximize business outcomes and impact with value-driven requirements engineering.

Aligning business outcomes with the product development roadmap pivot around value-driven discussions. At Facet, we install a rigorous product planning process that requires identification, estimation, and prioritization of key performance indicators, and their relationship with the proposed product feature. By creating a hypothetical numerical outcome associated with a product feature, we perform quantified cost-benefit analysis leveraging our understanding of the development requirements against the impact of the business case on revenue goals and operational costs. 

Facet’s business analysts leverage a series of exploratory, architectural, and review tasks that promote transparency between the client and development team. Our workshops have a proven track record of success with both direct clients and white label agencies who love our process. Don’t take our word for it though, let’s dive into the process and you can decide for yourself.

Discovery Process

Our process can be broken down into three phases:

  1. The Exploratory Phase consists of drafting questionnaires, collection of assets, and execution of any virtual meetings, teleconferences, or on-site workshops to collaborate on business intelligence surrounding the project.
  2. The Architectural Phase consists of formulating the information architecture, drafting wireframes, drafting the final discovery report, and performing small follow-up meetings to confirm findings and ask for clarification on functional workflows.
  3. The Review Phase consists of the final internal review of the project with lead developers on staff at your agency, as well as a final meeting with the client to review the findings of the project and to present the intended architecture. Final edits are made in this phase as any discerning questions arise.

Agile & SCRUM Discovery

In order to maximize the value of our discovery, we utilize the SCRUM methodology when collecting project requirements and project feature requirements.

The method is straightforward:

  1. Detail product requirements by adding items to the project backlog with high-level user stories, acceptance criteria, and priorities for each feature.
  2. Detail exclusions or exceptions from the project—this is especially important when migrating a website from an old platform into Drupal or another content management system.
  3. Identify key project requirements such as business rules and quality expectations including:
    1. Performance criteria - page load time, performance under traffic spikes, etc.
    2. Security criteria - site hardening, ISO compliance, identity management, etc.
    3. Constraints - timeline constraints, integration constraints, etc.
    4. Non-development criteria - design requirements, SEO strategy and configuration, training requirements, etc.
  4. Hypothesize business impact by mapping KPIs, and creating a business point estimate. 
    1. Key performance indicators allow product and business stakeholders to learn from iterative evolutions of the product and inform future product roadmap decisions. 
    2. Business point estimates can be compared with story point estimates to calculate a ratio of business value to development costs. This ratio is used to create a clear priority list based on relative business impact versus relative cost.
  5. Prioritize product features based on cost-benefit analysis. Scope and slice product features iteratively across agile sprints to ensure comprehension of product features and expected impact across development teams. 

Once the discovery workshop is complete, we deliver a discovery report to the client for discovery sign-off detailing:

  1. Project Requirements
  2. Project Backlog - priorities, user stories, acceptance criteria
  3. Exclusions
  4. Constraints

Once the discovery sign-off is complete, your project is now ready for:

  • Final estimates from our development team.
  • Publishing as a requirements document in an RFP.
    • This discovery is especially valuable if you are a public institution including a higher education institution or government agency.
  • Or, if you’re one of our white label agency clients, you can then have your internal development team perform a final estimate.