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The Better Business Analysis 
Institute presence, the Better 

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Business Analysis Podcast with 
Benjamin Walsh. 

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Hi, everybody, and welcome back 
to the Better Business Analysis 

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podcast with Benjamin Walsh. 
And this week we have ABA Bytes 

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talking about it's OK to ride a 
long requirement spec, but it's 

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only temporary. 
That's right. 

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I'm going to talk to you about 
when it's appropriate to write a

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long requirement specification 
when you do that, and when it's 

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time to then take the chunks of 
that specification and put it 

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into other systems and other 
types of, I guess, processes and

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documents so it can be consumed 
by those people who need to use 

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that information. 
So I've been working on a 

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project, a large piece of work. 
It's a program within a 

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portfolio and there are lots of 
projects, if you like, streams 

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of work in that portfolio and 
the process, the business 

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process in which we are 
improving the value chain, if 

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you like, is spread across those
projects. 

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What does that mean from ABA 
point of view? 

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What that means is you might 
start with a requirement 

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specification document, a 
business requirements document 

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where you're capturing 
assumptions, constraints, pain 

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points, res in one document, 
even in decisions in like a Word

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document form or a Google Doc. 
And at the same time you might 

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be transferring that or we're 
working in a requirements 

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matrix, requirements 
traceability matrix, which you 

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might have that information in 
and you might be copying it back

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and forth within Word and Excel.
You've got it in Word because 

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you might want to send some of 
those out to get clarification 

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during the analysis phase. 
Not as a published document, but

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just simply as a question and 
answer on getting people to to 

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work on it. 
Sometimes Word of course is 

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better at showing visual 
depictions of things and having 

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tables through, but it's pretty 
useless when you're trying to 

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track that stuff, which is why 
Excel and a requirements matrix 

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makes sense as your kind of 
master. 

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If you're in this Phase, I would
highly recommend that your 

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requirements traceability matrix
in Excel is your master and that

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you're just copying information 
into Word for the purposes of 

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showing people and talking about
it. 

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Now I'm going to make another 
assumption here, which is you've

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already kind of got a bit of a 
scope. 

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You already have your scope, 
which ideally is defined by 

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epics, and you may have done 
that through, say, PowerPoint 

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presentations and talking about 
it or mural something. 

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So now we have a bit of an 
outline. 

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You're working in these two 
medium. 

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Now what this is OK to be in and
that requirement specification, 

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even though I go on about BA 
should be running along spec 

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this spec, and I'm going to be 
clear it's a working spec, can 

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be quite null. 
So for this particular example I

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was talking about, I maybe had 
100 and 52150 pages of document 

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reference material, process 
diagrams, process steps, pain 

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points, requirements, all put 
together in, in a, in a list of 

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tables within this Word document
for my own benefit, a business 

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requirement spec that's about 
200 pages. 

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But I should know that my 
audience doesn't want to consume

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all that. 
So what I need to do then is now

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work on who my stakeholders are 
and how I want to share that 

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information. 
If I'm working with my product 

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owner just before I go into the 
delivery side, into the like 

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agile delivery or whatever 
mechanism you're using, then I 

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should really be going through 
the Excel spreadsheet working 

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with them. 
What's in scope, what's out of 

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scope, What's code must should 
your Moscow ratings in any note?

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So they, they understand that 
that's the master and you've 

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working with them in that 
medium. 

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They may also want a copy of 
that, which you could then flick

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out in terms of Word format. 
So that's your requirement side.

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Now what do you do with 
everything else? 

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Because when you move to the 
delivery cycle, it should be 

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easy or known from a lot of your
BAS that once you get to 

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delivery, you should be working 
in a delivery tool like DevOps 

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or Jira. 
And at that point you copy your 

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stories or you import your 
stories into Jira. 

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You should ideally have epics 
which link to user stories. 

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I don't like the feature join 
that Azure DevOps has and I 

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ignore that and I use my own 
custom process. 

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And then user stories may 
develop into child user stories 

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and tasks within Azure DevOps 
within your development system 

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could be a juror. 
That's fine. 

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The master then becomes that 
system and your requirements 

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matrix is kind of signed off as 
your kind of starter 

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requirement. 
That's how you work with 

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requirements. 
So I could do a whole session on

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that, but that's how you work 
with it. 

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But what I'm trying to answer it
or articulate to you today is 

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what do you do with everything 
else? 

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What do you do with the process 
step? 

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What do you do with the issues 
and the risks that you used to 

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have in your starter document? 
Well, within these systems, JIRA

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and as your dev OPS, I think 
it's best that you create work 

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types or issue types depending 
on which system you're using, 

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which allow you to capture in 
the same way you capture user 

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stories, pain points, maybe the 
process steps, issues, risks and

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decisions and have them in 
there. 

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And if you've created those 
custom types, then you can 

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actually transfer all that 
information from your working 

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document into Azure DevOps or 
into Jira. 

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And then the project manager can
see those. 

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The team can then raise those. 
The development team and the 

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project manager can summarize 
those in the issue reports. 

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And the risk reports and issues 
can be tracked through that 

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workflow system, right? 
So it's enough of me. 

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So it's OK to have a requirement
specification document that's 

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really long, but it should be 
temporary because you're then 

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moving that along into other 
systems as you move into 

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development.