Requirements gathering is the process of understanding and documenting what characteristics a project must or should have. This is an important part of the project for success, after all if you don’t know what you are building how can you build it well or ensure it is fit for purpose.
Data products are no exception. They too should go through requirements gathering. The bigger the project the more important requirement gathering becomes.
A key benefit of requirements gathering is that it brings everyone onto the same page. This is particularly important when a project has multiple stakeholders. It’s easy to imagine a situation where different stakeholders have a different understanding or expectation of the project outcome. With a product requirements document it becomes a lot easier to ensure the whole team knows why and what the project will bring.
The below document ‘get it right the first time‘ is a great resource for understanding all the different areas of requirements gathering, as well as the kind of language to use for a clear and concise document:
get_it_right_the_first_time1Luckily there is no need to start from scratch when creating a requirements gathering document (or product requirement document) for data projects. Many smart minds have already put some thought into it which can be used for inspiration
- https://sarahsnewsletter.substack.com/p/the-analytics-requirements-document
- https://wow.agiledata.io/wow/design/information-products/information-product-canvas-and-brief/
- https://medium.com/@leandroscarvalho/data-product-canvas-a-practical-framework-for-building-high-performance-data-products-7a1717f79f0