Corvus Consulting

CES Data is a small consulting firm in Toronto that specializes in delivering financial management software for world-class institutions. The projects that CES Data takes on can range widely in scope and complexity, and establishing understanding with clients is, of course, a high priority.

Without a dedicated business analyst or spec writer on the team, they needed a process for discovering and documenting requirements that would form the contract between the client’s needs and the implementation team.

After getting to know the team, their backgrounds and individual skills, I developed a simple process and a number of templates for gathering and documenting the requirements of each project. The key challenge was to create a process that would fit in with the existing skill set of the team, would foster collaborative requirements discovery and remind everyone of the important checkpoints in specification developmetn without dragging down the schedule.

Achieving this balance left the CES Data team with a set of tools and methods that they feel confident taking to clients and using as a contract of software expectations.