Requirements Workshop -Text Analytics System - Serene Zawaydeh

University of Toronto

School of Continuing Studies

Foundations of Business Analysis

SCS 2379-089

Instructor: Farzad Khan

Requirements Workshop for

Text Analytics System

Prepared by:

Serene Zawaydeh

March 24, 2015

Foundations of Business Analysis Serene Zawaydeh

2 | P a g e

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3

Description .................................................................................................................................................... 4

Requirements Workshop Example ............................................................................................................... 5

Prior to Workshop ..................................................................................................................................... 6

1. Business Requirements ......................................................................................................................... 6

2. Stakeholder Requirements ................................................................................................................... 8

3. Solution Requirements ......................................................................................................................... 9

3.1 Functional Requirements ................................................................................................................ 9

3.2. Non Functional Requirements ..................................................................................................... 10

4. Transition Requirements ..................................................................................................................... 10

Strengths and Weaknesses ......................................................................................................................... 11

Strengths ................................................................................................................................................. 11

Weaknesses ............................................................................................................................................ 11

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 12

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Requirement Types ........................................................................................................................ 3

Figure 2: Requirements Gathering Rules .................................................................................................... 4

Figure 4: CRM Failure Rates .......................................................................................................................... 5

Figure 3: Text Analytics System to “Listen to the Voice of the Customer” ................................................... 7

Figure 6: Business Requirements .................................................................................................................. 6


3 | P a g e

Introduction

The foundation of a successful business analysis project is based on a thorough understanding of

requirements and what needs to be delivered. In 2009, an article showed that 68% of projects fail

(Krigsman, 2009). In 2011, an article by the same author mentioned that 37% of projects fail (Krigsman,

2011). Unclear requirements, lack of agreement, lack of priority, contradictory, ambiguous, or imprecise

requirements could lead to project failure.

Communication issues might lead to delivery of a solution that does not meet the initial requirements of

the customer. The business analyst’s role is to ask all questions needed, and get full details about the

requirements of the project, and should seek feedback from the client a well as users. Requirements

are documented, and client’s approval must be obtained. There are four types of requirements that

need to be elicited during a project.

• Business Requirements: Define the goals and objectives of the organization

• Shareholder Requirements: Needs or wants of individuals or group within the organization.

• Solution Requirements: Functions and the qualities of the solution, both functional and non-

functional.

• Transition Requirements: Actions needed to implement the new solution

Figure 1: Requirement Types

Source: BA Experts, 2012 ()

This study provides a description of requirements workshop. An example of text analytics system is

developed to discuss possible questions that could be discussed in a requirements workshop. Strengths

of weaknesses of this tool are also provided at the end.

Requirement

Types


4 | P a g e

Description

A Requirements workshop is a requirements elicitation technique that provides the solution developers

with a solid base to follow when designing the model. Requirements need to be correct, complete,

consistent, clear, realistic, verifiable, and traceable.

The business analyst needs to get clarification on priorities: What the solution Must have, Should have,

Could have, and Won’t have (MoSCoW). The project’s scope also needs to be determined. Following

documentation of the requirements, the client’s approval needs to be obtained. Requirements should

remain static and should not be changed.

Prior to the workshop, the Business Analyst needs to conduct interviews with the participants one on

one, and needs to make sure that the right people are attending the requirements workshop. The BA

needs to learn the existing processes and jargon, to be able to facilitate the conversation with the

participants. Possible participants can include project managers, product managers, design engineers,

business development managers, operations managers, subject matter experts, and solution

developers.

The business analyst needs to obtain feedback not only from the client, but also users and practitioners.

This helps better understand the operation, what can be improved. The requirements workshop,

however, does not focus on the technology that will be used to deliver the solution.

Figure 2: Requirements Gathering Rules

Source: Adapted from text in Requirements Gathering 101 (Haughey, 2015)

Requirements

� Specific What, Where, When, Why, Who

� Measurable How much? How many?

� Realistic

Client

� Clarify

� Ask /Not Assume

� Agree / Approve

Requirements Document

� Confirm

� Agree

� Send to Client

Project Scope

� Define

� Agree

System Users

� Involve


5 | P a g e

Requirements Workshop Example


Competition is a main threat that affects profitability of companies in different sectors. Lost

customers can be a result of a decline in quality of service offered, and competitive offers. In

addition to loss of revenues from the particular lost customer, word of mouth, tweets, blogs and

comments on social media dissipate opinions across users regardless of location. A text analytics

system that aggregates data from different channels helps “Listen to the Customer”.

There is a need to introduce new Customer Relationship Management systems. According to C5

Insight, data between 2001 and 2014 shows that CRM failure rates can reach 70%. Unstructured

data might be kept in silos within different divisions of the organization, although it can be the

source of valuable insights. Analyzing unstructured data can help understand habits of customers

and their social networks, as is the case with IBM’s analysis of Call Detail Records. (Sathi , Radadia ,

& Thomas, 2014).

Figure 3: CRM Failure Rates

Source: C5 Insight

The objective of the proposed requirement workshop is to provide an overview of different types of

requirements for a text analytics solution. Service providers that could benefit from implementing

text analytics systems include: telecom operators, banks, insurance companies, airlines, healthcare

providers, or insurance companies.

Big data analytics solutions enable processing huge amounts of data, including real time processing.

There are solutions that can provide visualization of trends over time, such as Tableau Software.

The ability to produce actionable customer insights is an important factor that distinguishes high

performing companies compared to their industry peers. (IBM, 1700 CEO interviews, 2012).


6 | P a g e

Prior to Workshop

The requirements workshop needs preparation. The facilitator needs to determine who the right

people are to attend the workshop; should interview them; understand the existing process, prior

to the workshop.

• Present concept to management and obtain commitment from sponsor

• Meet with key Subject Matter Experts

• Identify participants

• Interview potential participants for 30 minutes

• Become familiar with business area, acronyms

• Identify potential issues and resolve them before the workshop

• Understand concerns and attitudes of the participants

• Understand group dynamics

• Identify potential problem people characteristics

• Conduct stakeholder survey

• Compile stakeholder assessment

1. Business Requirements

Following are some of the requirements that that are needed

• When should the project be delivered?

• What is the allocated budget?

• Which service or product will be investigated?

• Which lines of business?

• Does the project cover all the country, or specific provinces?

A text analytics system that is processes unstructured information from different channels:

• Direct communication with call centre

• Communication recorded on video at the branch

• Email and letters sent to different addresses

• Comments on social media platforms, such as twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blogs

• News articles published about the company and competitors in the market

• Convert audio and video to text

• Processes very large volume of data (Petabytes)

• The output of the system will be visualizations that provide trends over time.

• Identify reasons for customers dissatisfaction

• Identify products, services that are causing negative sentiment

• Identify products that need to be modified or discontinued


7 | P a g e

Figure 4: Text Analytics System to “Listen to the Voice of the Customer”

Audio to

Text

• Social Media • Surveys

• Email

• Text

• Blogs

• Phone call/ Audio

• Video recording

• Call Centre

• Meetings


Visualization, Data Mapping

Trends over time Insights, KPI, Metrics

Security, Privacy Maintained

What? When? Why?

Source: Developed for this Study


8 | P a g e

2. Stakeholder Requirements

• Which delivery channels have the highest priority? Ex: Call centre data,

blogs, tweets, emails?

o Do specific departments need to focus on one channel? For example, email complaints

related to finance issues.

For the specified product and service, in the specified location of interest, develop a text analytics

system to perform the following:

• Determine whether the study will be country wide, province wide

o Are the any specific focus areas depending on the region? For example, French and

English call to call centre in Quebec. English in other provinces

o Which languages should be used for the interface? English or English and French

• Are there any comparisons to other products on the market?

o Determine which competitors are attracting customer

• Keep track of all news releases that are related to the company and its competitors

• Keep track of all blogs that are written about the company and its competitors

o Determine which releases are specifically concerning the product / service in question

• Analyze interactions with the clients, including audio and video interactions

o Transcribe audio and video into text.

o When was the call made? What time of day? Which branch?

o How many calls did every agent receive?

� Helps with planning for customer service employees.

o Was reference made to one product or service

� Provides feedback to marketing

• Compare issues generated from different branches, regions, provinces

o What is the number of client facing interactions per branch? Which hours of the day?

� Which branch? Helps determine human resources needs and the number of

employees needed per branch.

� What caused the problem?

� Why did that happen?

• Find trends in churn rates, number of calls, emails, comments, and blogs received.

• Correlate the data of churn rates by across the country to number of blogs, comments, tweets,

customer service calls.

• Analyze the effect of news releases on comments generated through social media, blogs,

comments


9 | P a g e

3. Solution Requirements

The solution needs to determine the functional, and the behavior of the system, in addition to the

non-functional requirements of the system, or the environment in which the solution will work.

What are the must have, should have, could have, and won’t have requirements?

Example:

• Data, such as number of calls per branch, and blogs by origination must be visualized on a

map.

• Must have all news articles and blogs for the past 5 years.

• Must have updates on daily news information, at least every 3 hours.

• Should mine the web for blogs related to the company in English and French at least every

6 hours.

• Must show totals for all regions.

• Could start by providing a prototype of data related to Ontario.

• Could have live twitter feeds

• Could have translation of blogs and tweets from other languages

• Will not have news about competitors before 10 years

• Level of detail: Determine whether the client has complaints about a service, product,

product features, prices, interaction with an employee

3.1 Functional Requirements

A wizard walks the user through the steps they need to follow to display information they need

about the product or service and the branch. The combined data for all locations in the province

can be chosen as well.

• Enter the location of a branch, or select several branches or a region

• Enter the service or product, or several products

• Generate a map and visualizations to show:

o Blogs, tweets, news articles, comments that were generated about the company

and its products/ services

o The trends over time, showing the number of comments by region

� Number of comments will be given with color dimension

� The types of comments, positive or negative

� Which competitor was mentioned the highest number of times? Which

competitive product or service was referred to by region?

o Show the number of clients that were lost over time, by region

� Look into the impact of news articles, blogs / tweets / comments on the

number of customers

� Correlation between the number of comments/ news articles/ Blogs and the

number of clients lost following negative comments

o Zoom into a map, a location, in order to listen to a conversation, or view a Blog

• Analyze emails received in the company on different emails, and look into any negative

comments received. The focus is negative comments, as this is the driver for churn.


10 | P a g e

3.2. Non Functional Requirements

Non Functional requirements define the environment in which the solution will be operating. This

includes Security and privacy issues. The solution also has to comply with existing regulations. Some

of the regulations include Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act

(PIPEDA) which applies to private bodies governed by federal law. A healthcare provider or

insurance company needs to comply with the Health Information Protection Act (HIPA), which is

designed to improve privacy of people’s health information, while ensuring adequate sharing of

information is possible to provide health services. In USA, Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that is concerned with protection and security of health data

through setting and enforcing standards.

Following are some of the possible Non-functional requirements that the text data analytics system:

• User access needs to be authored through fingertip verification or a picture of the person

will be taken when they login to the system

• Login screens will determine whether the user can get access to the system or not

• Display the date a client provided their consent on sharing their information. If not

available, this case must not be displayed

• Can the output be shared with different people?

• Can the system be accessed from the company only, or is it possible to access the system on

the web while outside the company?

• Unstructured text must be edited. Personal data is masked, such as Social Insurance number

or Credit card number.

4. Transition Requirements

Transition requirements define transition from the current state or system, to the new system.

Based on the project constraints, including Time, Budget, and Scope:

• When will the new solution be delivered?

• Will it be rolled out indifferent provinces at the same time?

• Which branch will be the first to implement the system?

• Will the solution be delivered in house? Does the current team have the skills needed to

implement the solution?

• Are there training courses that need to be taken?

• Is there a need to hire new personnel? How many?


11 | P a g e

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

• Requirements are not gathered in isolation. Facilitating a requirements workshop provides an

opportunity to meet with the stakeholders, and elicit detailed requirements.

• Reduces the risk of missing important details relevant to different stakeholders.

• Immediate feedback obtained and provided. Participants are aware of all changes and

prioritization, and can provide their input and point of view.

• Participants can provide their point of view on why certain requirements are needed or not, or

should be prioritized over other requirement

• Stakeholders can collaborate and affirm their agreement or objection before the start of the

project

• Prior interviews set the foundation for the requirements workshop, making it focused, with

common jargon used by all participants.

• Preparation of forms helps in getting feedback from participants during the workshop.

• More than one workshop can be conducted, especially if new stakeholders are involved in the

project.

Weaknesses

• Interviews and workshop might yield conflicting requirements

• An invitation to requirements workshop might be seen as waste of time if it is not planned well, and

if the participants are not sure why their contribution is needed

• Participants from different divisions need to agree on requirements, making prioritization of

requirements a difficult task.

• Time management challenges as several participants present.

• Some workshops could be held over two or three days. This could be too long and participants

would lose interested in the workshop.

• Ending the workshop without discussion of the solution might leave the participants with

unanswered questions

• Giving examples of existing solutions in the industry and possible capabilities provides the

stakeholders with new ideas that they might want to implement in the organization. Such ideas

might not have been thought of without knowing the types of solutions that are available.

• Incomplete documentation of the workshop might lead to loss of important details


12 | P a g e

Conclusion

Different parties communicate throughout the project. A client’s request develops into a project that

needs to be implemented by a team as described by the project manager. The solution developers do

not communicate directly with the client. With multiple people working on the project, there is a need

to clarify requirements by asking the client, and not assuming knowledge of what they need.

Documentation and communication between the team members needs to be aligned to the needs and

requirements of the client.

Requirements workshop does not talk about the solution. However, providing examples of existing

solutions shows that the project is realistic, has been applied elsewhere and can have valuable insights.

It can be easier to get approval for the project.

IBM Big Insights provides offline text analytics, while IBM’s Streams is used for real time text analytics.

Features include the following:

• Company specific data is fed into the system, and text analytics is developed.

• Scalable solution. Can process Peta bytes of data, and a large corpus of documents.

• Unstructured text data extracted from large amounts of data.

• Handles spelling errors.

• Business rules defined based on knowledge from Subject Matter Experts.

• Parallel processing and execution of more than one command at the same time.

• Ability to define what type of information needs to be extracted. Example: Names, persons,

phone numbers, etc.

• Extract sentiment from online content.

• Analysis of Social media, and customer service notes.

• Service and product gap analysis.

• Applications:

o Text analytics system for prescription drugs. Determine patients who got prescriptions

of two drugs.

o Social media feed to predict purchasing plans. Consumer expressing interested to buy

online

o Reputational risk. Whether a product or service, or action triggered negative sentiment

o Identify and prevent customer churn

Requirements need be detailed and documented in detail, to build a strong base for a successful project.


13 | P a g e

Bibliography

BA Experts. (2012, October 1). What are Requirements? Retrieved March 22 , 2015, from

BusinessAnalysisExperts.com: http://businessanalysisexperts.com/what-are-requirements/

Bommireddipalli, V. (2012, June 12). IBM Big Data. An Introduction to Big Data Text Analytics - Part I.

Retrieved March 22, 2015, from www.youtube.com:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMNkP0zxbo4

C5 Insights. (2014, July 17). 30% - 60% of CRM Projects Fail. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from

http://www.slideshare.net/C5insight/crm-failures: http://www.slideshare.net/C5insight/crm-

failures

Haughey, D. (2015). Requirements Gathering 101. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from

www.projectsmart.co.uk: http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/requirements-gathering.php

Krigsman, M. (2009, January 14). Study: 68 percent of IT projects fail. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from

zdnet.com: http://www.zdnet.com/article/study-68-percent-of-it-projects-fail/

Krigsman, M. (2011, March 15). CIO analysis: Why 37 percent of projects fail. Retrieved March 23, 2015,

from http://www.zdnet.com/: http://www.zdnet.com/article/cio-analysis-why-37-percent-of-

projects-fail/

Sathi , A., Radadia , J., & Thomas, M. (2014, September 24). Explore the advanced analytics platform.

Part 1: Support your business requirements using big data and advanced analytics. Retrieved

March 22, 2015, from www.ibm.com: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ba-adv-

analytics-platform1/

Date post:	06-Aug-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	serene-zawaydeh
View:	114 times
Download:	1 times