Question 386 - CBAP discussion

A national branch of a global company is struggling to improve business processes of its Public and Government Affairs (PGA) department. To work with external stakeholders effectively, PGA employees need to collect, manage, and exchange a vast amount of information. Complex cases involve collaboration of many employees from different departments. The ability to share information and to coordinate corresponding activities is crucial for the company's growth plans. Their current tools and practices do not serve the purpose well. The existing system, which was deployed a couple of years ago, has only a few active users. The majority of PGA employees avoid using it because the system is hard to use and lacks needed functionality. Consequently, available information is mostly unstructured and stored either locally or on a shared network drive. Some of the information exists only in a paper form.

The branch's PGA head, who sponsors the project, wants to implement a configurable solution that two other branches successfully deployed several months ago.

Both deployments were done by three solution consultants, who will be available to assist in the project. They will be responsible for tailoring the solution to PGA needs, as well as for training the PGA staff. With their help, the sponsor plans to complete the project in approximately three months.

The solution consultants reside in another country 7 hours ahead of the rest of the project team. They will be available part-time, but are planning two one-week long trips to the PGA central office to conduct initial training and to participate in the final deployment of the system into production. The consultants, in turn, expect a business analyst (BA) to assist in collecting necessary data and defining customization requirements.

The solution consultants have composed a set of as-is solution documents. A spreadsheet contains a catalog of brief definitions of all requirements with priorities assigned to them. A separate document explains data models and user interfaces. For the new and changed requirements, the BA wants to capture additional attributes such as the source, reason, complexity, and priority of change. Some of these requirements can be reused in other work.

How should information for these requirements be managed?