The key to giving your customers what they want is making sure you
have a comprehensive picture of what that is from the outset.
Thompson Racal Defence does it with Doors, as Liz Warren finds
out
Getting it right first time is the secret to pleasing customers at
minimal cost. But how do you follow that simple rule if you have to
deal with hundreds or thousands of requirements at once, and if
some of those requirements are ambiguous, missing or even
conflicting? That's the challenge that faces the design teams at
Thompson Racal Defence every time they embark on a new project, but
one they were finding increasingly hard to meet as projects became
more complex and customers more demanding.
The solution was to beef up the company's requirements
management strategy. Improved processes and tools are allowing the
company to capture requirements from the customer more accurately
and make links between related requirements, before tracing them on
to the design of the equipment. All the while, project managers can
identify, analyse and manage any issues that arise along the
way.
The need for action emerged in 1997 when Dick Allen-Shalless,
head of systems engineering at Thompson Racal Defence's sensors
division in Crawley, West Sussex, conducted a capability evaluation
of the company and discovered a number of problems in requirements
management. The major fault was that there was no overall strategy
or clearly defined process: to some extent, it was up to individual
engineering managers to determine how best to handle requirements
capture and management within each project. That meant the success
of projects depended heavily on the capabilities of those
particular managers.
The company did have a requirements management toolset, created
in-house using Microsoft Access, but requirements for smaller
projects tended to be captured in simple documents and
spreadsheets, often on an ad hoc basis. A key component in any new
strategy would be to source a more comprehensive requirements
management solution that could be used to underpin and enforce best
practice processes in all projects.
"The real benefit of having a tool that allows us to do accurate
requirements management is that we can identify any areas of risk
or non-compliance during the first 25% of the project life-cycle
rather than the last 25%," Allen-Shalless explains. "That's
essential given there is a savings factor of 10:1 between the front
end and the back end of the project.
"On top of that, identifying any conflict earlier in the process
allows us to manage the discrepancy, whereas if it occurs in the
back end, all we can do is cope with it. A good tool allows us to
bring decision-making to bear on problems early in the
programme."
To select a requirements management tool, the company carried
out an exhaustive study on those available and determined that
QSS's Doors offered the best match to the company's needs. Martin
Williams, chief engineer at Thompson Racal Defence, Crawley, was
involved in the selection process. "We looked at ease of use,
ability to interface with other applications, cost and other
factors - and our review was backed up by an earlier assessment
carried out by Racal Research. It was obvious that QSS's solution
provided advantages in many of the key areas."
However, as Allen-Shalless points out, Doors is only a tool.
"You still need a process in which to operate it," he says. A
critical step in the introduction of Doors to Thompson Racal
Defence was to ensure the surrounding processes were appropriate
and effective.
Doors had already been adopted by another member of the Racal
group to develop an advanced mission-planning tool for the UK Royal
Navy's Merlin Helicopters. Allen-Shalless and his team reviewed the
work done on the Merlin project and identified where Doors was used
for activities that were trivial or did not add value to the
project. This helped Thompson Racal Defence establish the value of
each function within the system and determine what it wanted to
achieve with Doors and how the software would be used.
Doors was then introduced within Thompson Racal Defence on the
Type 45 Destroyer programme, a project where the company felt
requirements management would be a particular headache. Shortly
afterwards the system was adopted by two other pilot projects and
it has since been identified as the preferred tool for requirements
management within the company. This means that all new programmes
and projects are likely to make use of Doors, while existing
project data will be transferred to Doors where this makes economic
sense. In the case of some projects where Access databases were
used to hold requirements information, migration has typically
taken just a few hours.
Now, the first step in any new programme is to use Doors to
capture the dozens of documents that make up the contract with the
customer. Doors can then extract the thousands of prime
requirements these documents contain and identify duplication,
ambiguity and voids. This allows Thompson Racal Defence to produce
a single, clear set of requirements against which the system can be
developed, but which can also be traced back to the original
contract documentation in the event of disputes with the
customer.
With such complex data sets another vital step is to determine
at the outset how this information should be structured in order to
meet the requirements of the project most effectively. For example,
who will possess responsibility for the various aspects of the
project, such as monitoring the overall availability and
reliability of the equipment under development? And how will
requirements flow to the teams of designers during the design
stage?
Taking into account these facts allows the data set to be
structured so that it becomes easy for the various project
sub-groups to pull together all the information they need in the
format they need.
During these initial stages, Thompson Racal Defence is careful
to guard against one of the potential drawbacks of Doors, which is
that it can become a micro-manager's dream. "You have to be careful
how you use it," Allen-Shalless points out. "You can easily
over-complicate the situation and get a requirements explosion by
producing too many derived requirements. We're careful to derive
requirements to an adequate level, and that level varies from
project to project."
In fact, although Thompson Racal Defence initially thought the
introduction of Doors would speed up the requirements capture
process, it now takes longer to process each requirement. However,
the work is being carried out to a much higher standard: it is
easier to trace requirements from initial contract documentation
through to final product testing, while the system ensures that
consistency is achieved where different documents contain varying
or ambiguous versions of the same requirement.
Once the project team starts generating designs, Doors then
helps Thompson Racal Defence to work with customers to verify
designs as early as possible in the project. "With Doors, we can
now get much earlier feedback as to the systems designer's
interpretation of a customer's original requirements; in the past
that would have been dealt with as tomorrow's problem," Williams
points out. In general, for an 18-month project delivery programme,
Thompson Racal Defence has been able to move requirements' review
from about five months into the project to less than two months
in.
Williams continues: "Because of reduced time-scales, Thompson
Racal Defence also often undertakes concurrent engineering by
proceeding with systems design while continuing requirements
analysis. This requires good knowledge and understanding of the
current level of risk, in particular the risk of the conceptual or
real system design not meeting the total requirements. By using
Doors, we can trace our analysis and see any possibilities of this
occurring much earlier in the programme, thereby significantly
reducing the probability of 'shocks' later on."
Finally, once the design of the equipment has been completed,
Doors helps Thompson Racal Defence to verify and validate the end
product against the initial requirements in the contract. It does
this by tracking how the requirements have been implemented into
the design. This allows Thompson Racal Defence to respond to
customers who, these days, are much "smarter" purchasers than, say,
10 years ago, and who now demand that systems rigorously meet every
requirement laid down in the contract. "We can't do that without a
tool like Doors," says Allen-Shalless. "Doors is our policeman: it
makes sure what we produce is what the customer ordered and it
allows us at all times to keep an eye on what it is we've got to
do."
It has an added advantage that if the requirements change, for
whatever reason, it is possible to see exactly which sub-systems
are affected. This brings huge benefits if the customer is unhappy
with the design, since Doors can quickly identify whether a change
the customer is pressing for is already covered somewhere in the
documentation. "It helps us clarify with the customer exactly what
the requirement is," Allen-Shalless explains.
It also saves a great deal of time when the company is asked to
produce slight variations on an existing design. Most of Racal's
contracts are for a very small number - perhaps 10 - of an
immensely complex item. Good requirements management helps
enormously when the same customer or a new customer wants a
modified version of the product. "If we can capture all the
requirements for that product and trace them into the design, we
can enter information about the changes the client wants and
identify immediately the impact of those changes on the various
sub-system in the equipment," explains Allen-Shalless.
Clearly, the overall impact of Doors on the requirements
management process has been significant, but Allen-Shalless warns
that tools and processes are not enough on their own. "You still
need highly competent staff who understand requirements management
to make use of them," he points out. The company has therefore set
up a requirements management centre of excellence, run by Williams,
which can supply requirements management expertise rapidly to any
project within the company.
Furthermore, every division or company within the Racal group
which uses Doors has nominated a member of staff to act as that
division's representative to a cross-Racal Doors user group. This
group gives design teams within Racal rapid access to problem
solving and best practice expertise regarding Doors. According to
Allen-Shalless, if one team using Doors identifies either a new way
to use the software or a problem and its associated fix, that
information can be propagated across the group within just two
days. The in-house user group also acts as a single point of
contact when issues need to be escalated to QSS, while Racal is a
participant with other firms in QSS's InDoors user group.
In the element of the company which was previously Racal Defence
Electronics there are now about 50 concurrent licences for Doors,
with 80 staff across the company trained to use it and,
Allen-Shalless estimates, some 18 major programmes at the company
now rely on Doors at any time. The next step is the roll-out of
DoorsNet, a web-based viewer for the Doors system that provides
less functionality than the full product but allows Doors
information to be disseminated more widely at lower cost. This will
allow project information to be published on Thompson Racal
Defence's corporate intranet and will make it easier for staff
across the company, from software developers to senior executives,
to monitor the progress of projects.
Staying on top of projects in this way will ensure that the
company can continue to satisfy customers and retain its place as a
leading player in the marketplace. "There is no question that we
are arriving at the acceptance stage for programmes with far fewer
problems than we would have expected under the old approach," says
Allen-Shalless. "The use of tools of this nature alongside other
developments in the company has considerably improved our ability
to deliver equipment to specification and in ever shorter
time-scales."
At a glance
The organisation
Thompson Racal Defence is a global Euro 610m turnover business,
arising from the merger of Racal and Thomson-CSF, providing
communications, electronic warfare, command information systems and
radar to the defence industry.
The challenge
More demanding customers, shorter timescales and ever more
complex requirements were challenging Thompson Racal Defence's
ability to deliver projects successfully.
The solution
Overhauling its requirements management processes and
implementing a comprehensive requirements management tool have
allowed Thompson Racal Defence to deliver programmes to
specification, on time and at lower cost.
The Computer Weekly/Buy IT case studies offer an in-depth
analysis of a successful IT project, with expert comment from a
panel. BuyIT was launched in 1995 by the DTI and an alliance of top
industry bodies. BuyIT has selected best practice examples on a
range of projects. Each case study is scrutinised by the BuyIT team
of experts who make their recommendations and comments. The BuyIT
Computer Weekly Best Practice Series is endorsed by Fit for
the Future, a CBI-led, government-backed campaign to get business
learning from business.
Critical success factors
Peter Duschinsky of BuyIT says:
- Insist on a clear definition of the business needs and expected
benefits, even for the simplest procurement, in terms that can be
measured and tested; if achievement of benefits is not planned it
will not take place
- The formal statement of the business requirements must show
that they are aligned with the business and that there is a real
business need for the process to be handled by the proposed
system
- Implement a clearly defined process and enforce it through
tools, while allowing sufficient but controlled flexibility; ensure
that the options considered go beyond incremental change and that
opportunities for new ways of working have been
considered
- Evaluation and review of the project requirements are essential
at an early stage and throughout the project to ensure that they
continue to support the business objectives. The programme manager
must have the authority to stop the project if this is no longer
the case
- Projects should be managed to an adequate level of detail -
don't get bogged down in micro-management - which will need to be
determined on a project-by-project basis
- Create a centre of excellence within the firm to provide
expertise and disseminate best practice
- Remember that tools and processes are not enough on their own:
you still need skilled, experienced people who can apply them
intelligently.
Feedback
Do you have any comments on this case study or any examples of
best practice of your own that you think should be considered for
this series? Please send comments and input to mark.lewis@rbi.co.uk
What the BuyIT experts say
Ken Deeks, member of BuyIT Marketing and Communications
Working Group and managing director, IT communications consultancy
Kaizo
In March, Andersen Consulting released research which revealed
that a typical $1bn high tech company can gain as much as $130m in
profits by improving its ability to manage customer relationships.
Today, smart businesses are investing heavily in information
management systems that capture complex information and transform
it into valuable customer and project intelligence. As markets grow
ever more sophisticated and customer expectations continue to rise,
finding ways of introducing best practice right across an
organisation in order to ensure that product or service delivery
promises are met at every stage of the customer relationship
lifecycle will be increasingly important.
This case study provides an excellent example of a business that
understands the complexities of brand value and reputation. By
adopting a strategic approach to customer relationship management -
one which looks to spot and solve potential problems at the
earliest possible opportunity - the Doors solution will deliver
maximum business value to customers and optimum profitability for
the company. To succeed today, an "outside-in" view of your
organisation is critical. By putting customers at the forefront of
its project management strategy, this team is streamlining its
business to exceed customer demands about speed, service and
quality.
Alistair Fulton, chairman, BuyIT Best Practice Group
Requirements management may not sound particularly exciting but,
as every IT manager knows, get the requirements right and you have
at least a good chance of a successful project. Get them wrong and
you have the certainty of lots of expensive corrective work later
on, and the high possibility of a failed project.
A planned and structured approach to identifying the business
requirements is essential to achieve success, for apparently simple
as well as complex information systems projects.
Companies like Thompson Racal Defence are dealing with tens of
thousands of different requirements on each of their defence
contracts, and we thought this would be a useful example to
highlight the issue.
For these highly complex projects, a requirement management
system will help to capture the wide range of system and end-user
requirements and link, trace, analyse and manage them to control
costs, improve processes, speed up verification and product
delivery.
Your projects might not be as complex as Thompson Racal
Defence's, but you will need to ensure that requirement capture and
management are carried out to a high standard. Peter Duschinsky has
identified the key success factors and the BuyIT Guideline:
Identifying The Business Requirements is available on
www.buyitnet.org.
Colin Thompson, director-general and chief executive officer,
British Computer Society
The process of capturing the user requirement and then taking it
through the various stages of the project lifecycle to delivery of
the system has been described as being akin to the party game of
Chinese whispers played by people who speak different languages.
Arguably, it is the main factor that distinguishes information
systems from other branches of engineering where, however complex
the design and build stages, the requirement is often relatively
clear and stable.
In the case of the IT-related project, the real business
requirement will:
- be difficult to define and even more difficult to express
without ambiguity
- have multiple interfaces to other parts of the overall
system
- change over time as the business need changes and the users
understanding develops.
Much of this complexity cannot be eliminated, but this case
study demonstrates how it can be handled and controlled effectively
using a standard application management tool.
Achieving the necessary integration between processes, people
and the chosen tool-set is more difficult than it might appear at
first sight, but it is the key to achieving important gains in
terms of cost, time-scale and supplier reputation.