Requirements discovery
On this page 9 topics
Overview
Topics
- Workshops
- interviews
- functional/nonfunctional requirements
Learn first
4 h of practice (estimate)
Learning outcomes
- Plan and facilitate discovery workshops and stakeholder interviews.
- Capture functional requirements as use cases or user journeys and nonfunctional requirements as measurable quality scenarios.
- Identify constraints (budget, regulation, existing systems, skills, timeline) and assumptions.
- Resolve conflicting requirements by making trade-offs explicit and getting owners to decide.
- Baseline requirements with traceability for change control.
Lessons
- 01Discovery as the architect's first deliverable
- 02Planning workshops and interviews
- 03Facilitation techniques
- 04Functional requirements and journeys
- 05Nonfunctional requirements that can be tested
- 06Constraints, assumptions, and conflicts
- 07Demo: facilitating Larkspur's discovery workshop
- 08Demo: resolving "real-time stock" vs "keep the ERP as master"
Lab and exercises
Lab
ARC-003-LAB1 · Larkspur requirements baseline
Outcomes: 1–5 · Time: ~4 h
- Plan the workshop: objective, agenda, participants, pre-reads, expected outputs.
- Run a role-played workshop with store operations, e-commerce, finance, IT, and security (peers or assessor play them).
- Capture functional requirements as journeys or use cases and nonfunctional requirements as quality scenarios.
- Record constraints and assumptions, with owners and check dates for assumptions.
- List conflicts with options and a decision owner.
- Assemble the baseline with a traceability ID per requirement and a change-control note.
Acceptance: every nonfunctional requirement is measurable; conflicts listed with a decision owner.
Exercises (case-based; six exercises)
| ID | Outcome | Task |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-003-EX01 | 1 | Write a one-page workshop plan and six interview questions for Larkspur store operations. |
| ARC-003-EX02 | 1 | Two participants dominate a session; describe three facilitation moves and when to use each. |
| ARC-003-EX03 | 2 | Write one journey with a failure flow for "customer picks up an online order" and give it IDs. |
| ARC-003-EX04 | 2 | Rewrite "the shop must be fast, secure, and always available" as three measurable quality scenarios. |
| ARC-003-EX05 | 3 | Sort twelve statements into constraints and assumptions, and assign an owner and a verification step to each assumption. |
| ARC-003-EX06 | 4, 5 | Store operations wants stock accuracy checked hourly; finance forbids new nightly ERP load. Present the trade-off, two options, a recommendation, and a decision owner; show how the baseline records it with change control. |
Show solutions
- EX01 Plan has objective, 3-hour agenda, invitees with decision rights, pre-read, outputs. Questions probe failures, peak days, current workarounds, and decision owners.
- EX02 Silent ranking round, time-boxes, direct invitation of quiet participants; the parking lot for tangents.
- EX03 Steps from notification to handover; failure flow: wrong ID, order not ready; IDs like FR-021 with links to capabilities.
- EX04 Example: 95% of product pages under 1.5 s at 2,000 shoppers per minute; account takeover attempts blocked after five failures per minute; 99.9% monthly availability of checkout excluding planned windows.
- EX05 Constraints are fixed (ERP remains finance ledger); assumptions need verification such as measuring store network bandwidth by a date.
- EX06 Options: hourly cycle count events to an inventory service with ERP nightly reconcile, or ERP API polling limited by capacity. Recommend the first; CIO and finance decide. Baseline stores requirement IDs, decision, date, and change log with version.
Outcome 5 is also covered by the lab traceability step.
Workplace evidence: a requirements baseline you facilitated that was signed off by the business.
Quiz
Outcomes: O1 workshops and interviews · O2 functional and nonfunctional capture · O3 constraints and assumptions · O4 conflicts and trade-offs · O5 baseline and traceability.
A self-check for you: nothing is graded, saved or sent anywhere. Choose an answer, then check it. You can try again as often as you like.
Practical part
Workshop facilitation scored by role-players using the lab, plus baseline review and exercises ARC-003-EX01 to EX06. Pass: quiz at least 8/10, at least five of six exercises correct, and a baseline where every nonfunctional requirement is measurable and every conflict has an owner.
Common mistakes
Gathering wish lists; letting the loudest stakeholder set priorities; untestable "must be secure and fast".
Assessment
Workshop facilitation scored by role-players plus baseline review.
Workplace evidence
A requirements baseline you facilitated that was signed off by the business.
Career relevance
Stakeholder management (ARC-041) and the ARC-CAP requirements section.