Purpose

The purpose of eliciting stakeholder requests is to gather input from any person or representative of an organization who has a stake--a vested interest--in the outcome of the project. Stakeholders might be end users, maintainers of the proposed system, shareholders, technical support representatives, or others.

Related Rational Unified Process Activity:

In the Requirements Workflow:

Overview

Stakeholder Requests for a proposed system can be gathered through a variety of elicitation techniques, including: interviews, questionnaires, requirements workshops, role playing, etc. See the Gather Information step in the Elicit Stakeholder Requests activity for a complete list. Whichever elicitation technique you use, you should record your results in one central location, such as a RequisitePro project, in order to reference them when defining business and system needs. You may choose to include your elicitation documents with the RequisitePro project that contains your system requirements, or you can create a separate RequisitePro project just for elicitation documents, and then use cross-project traceability to link your elicitation results to the system requirements RequisitePro project.

Each project has its own considerations for gathering Stakeholder Requests. Elicitation techniques differ, depending on your developers' and customers' knowledge of the system's domain and proposed functionality. As a starting point, RequisitePro provides a sample Stakeholder Requests document template and a predefined requirement type (STRQ û Stakeholder Requests) to help you collect Stakeholder Requests. You should modify the provided Stakeholder Requests template and create additional RequisitePro outlines, as needed, in order to gather additional input. You may want to create a RequisitePro outline to gather results for each elicitation technique: one template for questionnaire results, one template for storyboarding results, etc.; or, you may choose to record these results in one document.

Since Stakeholder Requests elicitation may vary for each project, we offer instructions for modifying the existing RequisitePro Stakeholder Requests outline or creating a completely new outline to meet your project needs. Begin by working with the existing Stakeholder Requests outline:

  1. Add the Stakeholder Requests document type to your project.
  2. Modify the provided Stakeholder Requests template.
  3. Create a Stakeholder Requests document.
  4. Complete the Stakeholder Requests document.
  5. Mark requirements in the Stakeholder Requests document.

1.  Add the Stakeholder Requests document type to your project To top of page

In order to use the Stakeholder Requests template provided in RequisitePro, you need to add the Stakeholder Requests document type to your project.

Note: If you created your project based on the RequisitePro Project Template, as described in the tool mentor Developing a Vision Using Rational RequisitePro, your project already includes the Stakeholder Request Document Type. In this case, you can skip to procedure 3.

Tool Steps

To add the Stakeholder Requests document type to an open RequisitePro project:

  1. On the Tool Palette, click Project > Properties. The Project Properties dialog box appears.
  2. Click the Document Types tab and click Add. The Document Type Add/Edit dialog box appears.
  3. Enter a name and description for the document type.
  4. Enter a file extension. The file extension is applied to all documents associated with the document type.
  5. Select the Stakeholder Request Requirement Type in the list.
  6. In the Outline Name field, select the RUP Stakeholder Requests outline. Click OK.
  7. Click OK in the Project Properties dialog box.

For More Information

Refer to the following help topic in the RequisitePro online help:

  • Creating and modifying document types (Index: document types > creating)

2.   Modify the Stakeholder Requests Outline To top of page

You can modify the RequisitePro Stakeholder Requests template to customize the questions for specific aspects of your project. Modify the RUP_stkreq.dot template in Microsoft Word (independent of RequisitePro). You can then use your customized template to create a new Stakeholder Requests document.

To modify the provided Stakeholder Requests outline:

  1. In order to preserve the original outline for future use, create a copy of the Word template file "RUP_stkreq.dot", located in the Outlines directory in your RequisitePro installation. Name the copy to identify it as the original file, for example, "Stakeholder_orig.dot".
  2. Open the template file "RUP_stkreq.dot" in Microsoft Word (independent of RequisitePro).
  3. Modify this file to adapt it to your project.
  4. Save and Close the "RUP_stkreq.dot" file.
    Note: If RequisitePro was running during this modification, you will need to close it and restart it to make the changes available within RequisitePro.

3.   Create a Stakeholder Requests Document To top of page

Create a Stakeholder Requests document in your RequisitePro project, based on the modified Stakeholder Requests outline.

Tool Steps

To create a Stakeholder Requests document:

  1. On the RequisitePro Tool Palette, select Document > New. The Document Properties dialog appears.
  2. In the Name field, type "Stakeholder Requests" or another name to identify the document (this will be the way you refer to this document in RequisitePro).
  3. In the Description field, enter a short description for the document.
  4. In the Filename field, enter a file name that RequisitePro will use when saving the document to disk.
  5. Select the document type which you added in procedure 1 above,  that was based on the RUP Stakeholder Requests outline. Click OK.

For More Information

Refer to the following help topic in the RequisitePro online help:

  • Creating requirements documents (Index: documents > creating)

4.   Complete the Stakeholder Requests Document  To top of page

  1. In the newly created Stakeholder Requests document, record the results of the interview process. You may choose to create multiple interview documents, or combine results in one document. We strongly encourage you to document each type of stakeholder you interviewed to ensure that a wide spectrum of stakeholders is represented in that process.
  2. Save the Stakeholder Requests document in the Word Workplace by selecting RequisitePro > Document > Save.

5.   (Optional) Mark Requirements in the Stakeholder Requests Document To top of page

The Stakeholder Requests document does not contain requirements per se. However, you may want to set traceability links between stakeholder requests (identified in the Stakeholder Requests document) and product features (identified in the Vision document). A change in stakeholder requests might impact the definition of one or more product features. By recording the dependencies between the two, you will be able to make careful and informed decisions in the Prioritize Use Cases activity. By marking stakeholder requests as requirements, you can also use them in traceability links in the Manage Dependencies activity.

Tool Steps

To mark stakeholder requests as requirements in RequisitePro, follow these steps:

  1. In the Stakeholder Requests document, select the text of the requirement.
  2. In the Word Workplace, do one of the following:
    • right-click and select Create Requirement.
    • click RequisitePro > Requirement > Create.
      The Requirement Properties dialog box appears.
  3. Select STRQ as the requirement type. Click the Attributes tab to modify the attribute values.
  4. Click OK.

For More Information

Refer to the following help topic in the RequisitePro online help:

  • Creating requirements in a document (Index: requirements > creating > ...in a document)
Copyright  ⌐ 1987 - 2000 Rational Software Corporation

Display Rational Unified Process using frames

Rational Unified Process