Visioning

Definition

Visioning

the requirements engineering task during which the customer organization’s vision of its business enterprise, system, application, or component is produced and documented

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Visioning is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Abstract
• Superclass: Engineering Task
• Subclasses:
  • Business Visioning
  • System Visioning
  • Application Visioning
  • Component Visioning

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of Visioning are to:

• Produce and document a consensus vision of the business enterprise, system application, or component to be engineered.

Preconditions

Visioning can typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• The business strategy team and the technology strategy team is staffed and adequately trained in their respective visioning subtasks.

Completion Criteria

Application visioning is typically complete when the following postconditions hold:

• The relevant vision statement has been completed, evaluated, and approved by the authorized customer representative.

Steps

Visioning typically involves the following teams performing the following tasks in an iterative, incremental, and parallel manner:

• Business Strategy Team, which performs:
  • Business Visioning
• Requirements Team, which performs:
  • Application Visioning
  • Component Visioning

Techniques

Visioning can typically be performed using the following techniques:

• Documentation Studies.
  Study all documentation (e.g., customer analysis, market analysis, technology analysis, user analysis) that may provide valuable input to the vision statement.
• Interviews.
  Interview the customer representatives, marketing representatives, user representatives, and business domain experts.
• Brainstorming.
  Brainstorm informal lists of business problems and opportunities, stakeholder needs, and application goals.
• Cross Functional Teams.
  Use a cross-functional requirements team including multiple roles to perform application visioning.
• Incremental development.
  Incrementally envision the business enterprise, application, or component.
• Iteration.
  Iterate the vision statement.
• Parallel Development.
  Envision the business enterprise, application, or component in parallel with:
  • Other requirements engineering tasks (e.g., requirements elicitation, requirements reuse, requirements analysis, requirements management).
  • Other activities (e.g., management).
• Timeboxing.
  Timebox the visioning task so that new increments of goals are available at regular intervals for driving the requirements elicitation, reuse, analysis, and specification tasks.

Work Products

Visioning typically results in the production of the following work products:

• Business Vision Statement
• Application Vision Statement

Guidelines

• TBD.