How to Organize Requirements with Three Passes
Whenever we're planning changes to how a business process or system functions, a bunch of information is captured upfront as part of meeting notes, research, and documented requirements. One of the challenges is how to organize these during the discovery phase, so let's see how three passes helps make this process easier.
Why are we using three passes to review notes and requirements documentation?
Each pass has a different intention and level of focus:
Assign tags classifies specific points and helps establish your working memory
Identify themes captures a list of themes that appear across your documentation
Map themes creates traceability between a theme and any relevant points in your documentation
Let's dive deeper into each of these to see how it works.
Assign tags
As you review documentation, start annotating any points that stand out. Your list might have more than the points below, although these establish a solid foundation:
Requirements are a mix of criteria and constraints, including any quantitative measures that define success
Ideas represent potential solutions to challenges or additional use cases to explore
Questions about missing information and assumptions that need validation
Dependencies on people, processes, and systems that impact the project, which is both within your project and on other initiatives
Risks that could impact success, including current blockers and potential future challenges
This pass is similar to the shorthand technique described in how to write better meeting notes, although even if you're doing that as you write your documentation, you should still do this pass to assign tags to cover any gaps that might be newly apparent.
Identify themes
Once you have reviewed and tagged your documentation, your next pass is to identify common themes and use cases.
Either create a new document or grab some paper if you prefer a throwback to the analog days:
Start reading through your documentation
Write a short phrase as you encounter a theme or use case
Glance at your list of themes as you go to keep those fresh in your working memory
Once you're done reviewing all of the documentation, you may want to consolidate any duplicate themes that you captured; it happens to the best of us.
Map themes
For this final pass, the intent is to create a link between your documentation and themes. There are many ways to do this, although the method that practically anyone can use is with a spreadsheet.
Create three columns headers on your sheet, and start filling out the rows beneath as you read through your documentation:
Theme has the short phrase from the list you captured in your previous pass
Document establishes traceability to the document by name, and ideally with a link or reference to the specific section
Excerpt has a copy/paste of the relevant notes so you don't have to revisit the document directly
You will likely end up with multiple rows per theme, which is intentional. You're able to sort or filter your spreadsheet to look at a single theme, and even do some lightweight analytics to identify gaps and risks on a per theme basis.
Once you've completed these three passes, you can move forward with the next phase of discovery and design, which includes:
Resolving any open questions and assumptions
Creating a plan to mitigate risks and remove blockers
Exploring solutions that meet the requirements and constraints
Sequencing how each theme or use case will be delivered to stakeholders
TLDR: Use three passes to organize your requirements by assigning tags, identifying themes, and mapping themes back to your documentation.
