If you know Mike Urgo, you know he loves a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You also know he loves a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich analogy even more.
Working in, around, or with technology teams, you have probably had to work with ‘requirements’. Depending on the organization, there are different types of requirements. Business requirements, technical requirements, KPIs, OKRs, financial forecasts, executive requests, the list goes on. But in the end, all these ‘requirements’ are just the way for a person or organization to describe what they want.
Enter the peanut butter and jelly sandwich analogy.
Let’s pretend that Mike Urgo, the Owner and Founder of Intellectual Nebula, and arguably the most powerful person on this planet, asks for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Someone looking to impress their executive may immediately turn, run, and make a PB&J as fast as possible. But, when they return thirty minutes later, they would be mortified to find out that their executive isn’t happy.
Why?
Well, they didn’t take the time to understand what Mike Urgo wanted.
This happens so often.
An executive needs something, and like many executives, they are busy and simply share the high-level demand. Many organizations don’t have the internal functions to work with executives to understand their request and then translate that into Business Requirements. These requirements are often memorialized in a BRD and are then translated to Technical Requirements in a TRD.
We will get into the difference shortly.
Let’s first focus on Business Requirements.
Business Requirements help detail the request from your organization with the purpose of ensuring that what is delivered is what was requested. This is where the PB&J analogy rings true. What the resource should have done after Mike Urgo asked for a PB&J sandwich is say something like: “Mike, that sounds great! To make sure I get you exactly what you want, can you give me 5 – 10 minutes of your time to ask some qualifying questions”. Now, they can make sure Mike Urgo gets his PN&J his way.
If the executive pushes back, they can illustrate the number of variables needed to guarantee they meet the need.
You get the point.
All the above should be considered with Business Requirements and deal with WHAT. What should be delivered and what is expected. Technical Requirements deal more with the HOW. How should the PB&J be built. Sometimes the Technical Requirements can invoke some follow-up questions for Business Requirements, which help make sure things don’t get overlooked. For instance, when making the PB&J the technical team could be looking at the BRD and ask: “We are getting ready to spread the peanut butter, but don’t know if they want it on both sides, or just one?”.
This just requires a quick follow-up to the Executive and addendum to the BRD. When the PB&J is tested and delivered, teams often use a document called a Traceability Matrix, which drives the QA and ensures what is delivered can be traced back to the original requirements.
You can see how important requirements are for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s easy to appreciate just how important requirements (both business and technical) are for organizations working to improve their technology stack and better support their organizations. Don’t forget to take the time to ask the questions to understand the ask and deliver the correct PB&J.
Do you need someone to help guide those conversations? Want to make sure your team is getting what they asked for and avoid too many development iterations, which wastes time and resources? Be Thankful for Good Requirements and see how Intellectual Nebula can help you.
Schedule a call with us today and let us begin cultivating a relationship that can help your organization exceed its goals:
The ability to take the time to understand your organization, your people, your processes, and translate to technological solutions is what makes Intellectual Nebula so effective!
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