Requirements analysis
Integrative Biology is typical of many large scale research projects spanning several years in that, being about innovation, its targets are hard to state specifically at the outset. The way forward emerges as the work progresses rather than being entirely predictable in advance. With this in mind, the approach taken by the project has been one of iterative development and prototyping closely involving the users. It is crucial in this type of project to engage potential users early to ensure buy-in from those who are ultimately going to use and benefit from the technology being developed.
Our initial approach to capturing requirements was to invite users to define scenarios describing how they would like to work if they had the means to do it. This was relatively unsuccessful and we eventually settled on interviewing users to try to extract as much about their requirements as they were able to articulate at that time. These interviews were based on questionnaires prepared and circulated to the users in advance. The user requirements captured in this process were sufficient to identify the key elements of an initial prototype and the process was a good opportunity to develop the bonds between users and developers which are central to success in the project.
As the project progresses the developing prototype infrastructure is being used to implement a range of demonstrators based on individual user's research objectives. These act as a focus for critical review of the infrastructure by the users and for continuing dialogue between users and developers. In future they will also enable us to perform simple observational studies with the users.
The danger in this approach is one of providing solutions to users which they learn to live with rather than building what is really needed to make innovative progress. However flexibility and close interaction with the users should ensure that the former evolves into the latter as the project progresses. This pragmatic iterative approach to requirements capture is now showing good results in terms of both developing technical capability and growing cooperation within the project team.