8.3.1 Planning

The starting point for a project in an acquisition organization will be some form of concept description. In its most basic form this will be just an idea, but usually it will be more concrete and well founded. The reason for this is simple: projects must be authorized by the organization and the authorization process will require some documented evidence to support the case for spending time and money (resources). The evidence usually contains a brief description of what the users want to be able to do (the concept) and a supporting argument to indicate the benefits that will ensue to the operating organization from the provision of such a capability.

The information in the concept definition enables the project manager to begin planning. Since the concept definition contains a " description of what the users want to be able to do", we immediately have an initial set of stakeholders ( users) for the system and an outline of one or more scenarios ( ability to do something).

The first step in constructing a plan consists of identifying a fuller set of stake-holder types and a more complete set of scenarios that cover the complete range of expected operation of the system including, where useful, different modes of operation. Once the number of stakeholder types is known, it is possible to plan in detail how to set about eliciting requirements. Actions that may be instantiated in the plan...