About the Benefits and Pitfalls of Relying on Analytical and Quantitative Methods for capturing User Needs and Requirements.

1. About the Benefits and Pitfalls of Relying on
Analytical Methods for capturing User Needs and
Requirements
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2. Analytical Methods in Systems
Development
• Analytical and quantitative tools allow a rational
treatment of a design problem that leaves little
or no room for emotions or feelings.
• These approaches perform a clear decomposition
of the design problem by distinguishing the
various elements that should drive it i.e., the
various requirements and their respective
categories such as: mission, input/output,
external interfaces, functional, non-functional,
system wide, and technology requirements.
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3. Analytical Methods in Systems
Development
• The clear definition of these requirements is a
basis for generating an objectives hierarchy for
the solution System.
• This hierarchy is a decomposition and
quantification of the characteristics that describe
an acceptable solution system.
• Functional analysis is often performed and aims
at grouping and decomposing the functions of a
system to discover the behavior embedded in it.
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4. Analytical Methods in Systems
Development
• Functional analysis strongly depends on the initial
formulation of various scenarios describing from
a user standpoint what services are needed from
the system (Use Cases).
• Performing functional analysis reveals some
implied requirements that are not explicitly
stated in the originating requirements and that
are discovered by yet another decomposition and
classification exercise.
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5. Analytical Methods in Systems
Development
• Inputs, outputs become valuable instruments
to capture the interaction taking place
between functions and sub-function in terms
of data, material, or energy transformed or
transported within the system and between
the system and its environment.
• Once a solution system is instantiated, it is
evaluated to determine its degree of
conformance to the objectives hierarchy.
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6. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• How many times have such rigorous analytical
methods delivered systems that still failed to
satisfy the real needs of the system’s users?
• The answer is: more often that Managers,
Business Analysts, Architects, Engineers, and
Developers would have expected.
• Of course one could blame such user’s
dissatisfaction on some deviation from the ideal
rigorous analytical and quantitative approach. In
all fairness, some blame can be found there.
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7. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Let us make a bold statement here by holding also
responsible the almost exclusive reliance that many
Business Analysts, Engineers, and Developers place in
trusting analytical and quantitative techniques.
• This trust is often oblivious to the fact that the needs
that they think they are fulfilling could be blurred by
the means used to perceive or capture them.
• An analytical decomposition and quantification of
requirements is just one of several ways of perceiving
and understanding the actual needs and purpose that a
solution system intends to fulfill.
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8. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Certainly, this analytical approach is more aligned
with the technical culture of the modern western
world.
• Engineer and Analysts in the western world are
educated to value and trust engineering efforts
based on their use of well-defined analytical and
quantitative techniques and tools.
• Many Engineers and Analysts tend to perceive
needs in analytical and quantitative terms
because they usually fulfill them by analytical and
quantitative means.
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9. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Accurately capturing, communicating, and fulfilling the
requirements of a system is a daunting task that has
been and continues to be the object of many
commendable research efforts.
• Sage [7] talks about the importance of technical
direction and system management. He identifies
twelve deadly systems engineering transgresses.
• For example, transgression one states: ”There is an
overreliance on a specific analytical method or a
specific technology that is advocated by a particular
group”.
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10. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Sage also gives the following seven attributes of a
sound system engineering process(or system
development process):
– 1: Is Logically sound
– 2: Is matched to the potential and organizational
situation and environment extant.
– 3: Supports a variety of cognitive skills, styles, and
knowledge of the human who must use the system
– 4: assists users of the system to develop and use their
own cognitive skills, styles, and knowledge
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11. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Sage also gives the following seven attributes of a
sound systems engineering process(or system
development process):[continue]
– 5: Is sufficiently flexible to allow use and adaptation by
users with differing experiential knowledge
– 6: Encourages more effective solution of unstructured
and unfamiliar issues allowing the application of job
specific experiences in a way compatible with various
acceptability constraints
– 7: Promotes effective long-term management
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12. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• The analytic and quantitative formulation of
requirements does not capture accurately
enough the full range or richness of
information provided by stakeholders.
• For example, during face-to-face meetings,
facial expression, tone of voice, gestures, and
body posture carry 93% of the information
content while verbal language only conveys
the remaining 7% [Mehrabian 1971]
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13. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• If we acknowledge the fact that biased
information is incredibly rich [Draft and Lengel
1984] then capturing as much biases as possible
from stakeholders during requirements elicitation
sessions should be a valuable objective as
opposed to being considered a deficiency.
• Rejecting bias in requirements definition implies
denying their usefulness in identifying the
characteristics of what stakeholders desire or
despise.
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14. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• One way of capturing biases through analytical means
is to create a hierarchical ranking of the relative
importance of selected requirements as perceived by
the customers/users [1].
• This approach though valuable to exert analytically
based trade-off decisions and system evaluations, is an
imperfect way of capturing emotional dimensions of
face-to-face communications.
• It is a subtle and often unconscious manifestation of
the drive that many analytic thinkers have to define
acceptability over seeking desirability [Yoshida Kosaku
1989].
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15. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Acceptability focuses on defining a precise
boundary within which anything is acceptable.
• Desirability is holistic in nature; it addresses
the somehow imprecise but more
fundamental aim sought by stakeholders.
• Kurstedt[4-6] identifies and tries to reconcile
three dimensions of the systems approach:
The systems perspective, the generalist
perspective, and the holistic perspective.
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16. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• The systems perspective refers to the analytical view of
a problem or system and the needs to which it
responds.
• The holistic perspective (and generalist perspectives)
must complement the system perspective in order to
more effectively tackle and solve the significant
engineering problems faced in our modern society.
• Refer to the presentation: The four thinking
perspectives of the successful Business Analyst for
further details on using system, generalist, and holistic
thinking in Business Analysis.
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17. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Kurstedt also reminds us that even though Western
culture’s engineers and analysts have harder times
understanding and applying holistic thinking, they are
no strangers to it.
• Kosaku Yoshida [3] illustrates holistic thinking by giving
the example of dating and asks the following question:
“when you go on a date, would you evaluate whether
your date has intelligence:96 points, appearance: 90
points, emotional stability 50 points? Do you evaluate
your partner like that? If you get a date, turn off the
light and get the smell; get the total understanding.
You are not going to analyze. You are going to capture
the entire feeling. That I call ultimate understanding”
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18. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• The immediate reaction of an analytic thinker to
this argument could be voiced as: “If a single
person can make a choice based on a holistic
thinking process then how do you reconcile the
most likely different holistic choices that each
system’s stakeholder would make?”
• One could answer this question by first pointing
out that an analytic summing of individual holistic
choices made by the members of a group yields
neither an analytic solution nor a holistic one.
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19. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• When a group has to make a decision using the
holistic approach, the group must come together
as a “Group” to get synergy through the holistic
perspective.
• The human brain has this special ability to come
to a conclusion from unconscious, incomplete or
missing data; a group of human minds has the
potential to do things an analytic model can’t,
such as coming up with a synergistic answer.
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20. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Humans have this unique ability to gather and
relate issues, characteristics, nuances, meanings,
essences, alternatives, and criticalities ingredients
all so needed to perform a holistic thinking
process.
• The holistic perspective of a system wants to
capture the system’s ultimate purpose or
meaning.
• The meaning of a system transcends any system’s
components or parts for they are only
contributors to its essence.
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21. Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in
Systems Development
• Analytic means are inadequate to capture the ultimate
meaning, purpose, and essence of a system.
• Deming illustrates the synergy effect by taking the
example of an orchestra that gradually improves its
performance to one day becoming able to soar: that
special level of performance that can hardly be
analyzed and that is rooted deeply in the hearts and
minds of the orchestra’s musicians and conductor.
• A group of people can effectively exercise the holistic
approach when they have mutual respect, good
communication, a good participation process, and a
shared purpose [5].
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22. References
• [1] Buede Denis. The engineering Design of Systems. Wiley Series in systems
Engineering, New York, chap 9, 13
• [2]Daniel Jesse, Warner Paul W., and Bahill Terry A. Quantitative methods for
Tradeoff Analysis. The Journal of the International Council on systems Engineering
volume 4 number 3-2001
• [3] Kosaku Yoshida. Transcripts of videotape Made in Japan “Whole”-istically, petty
consulting/production, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990, p.11
• [4,5,6] Kurstedt H. A. Management Systems Theory, Applications, and Design.
Virgina Tech Blacksburg, VA. 2000 chap 1.1.16.6, 1.1.27.4.3, 1.1.27.4.4, 1.1.16.2
• [7] Sage. Andrew P. Systems Management for Information Technology and
Software Engineering. Wiley Series in systems Engineering, New York. 1995, p.7
• [8] Sage Andrew P. Systems Engineering. Wiley Series in Systems Engineering, New
York. 1992, p.223
• [9] Sage Andrew P. Decision Support Systems Engineering. Wiley Series in Systems
Engineering, New York. 1991, p.23
• [10] Daft L. Richard and Lengel H. Robert, Information Richness: A new approach
to managerial behavior and organization design (Organizational Behavior, vol.6,
1984, pp.191-223)
• [11] Kosaku Yoshida, Deming Management Philosophy: does it work in the US as
well as in Japan? Columbia Journal of World Business, Fall 1989, p12.
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23. For Comments and Questions contact didier@pragmaticohesion.com
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