The Vision provides a high-level, big picture view of the envisioned system and a basis for the more detailed technical requirements. It is an overview of the project and captures the "essence" of the envisioned solution in the form of high-level requirements and design constraints. It communicates the fundamental "why and what" for the project and is a gauge against which all future decisions should be validated.
The Vision should be one of, it not the first, areas of focus. It should evolve steadily during the earlier portion of the lifecycle, becoming more stable in later phases, but is meant to be revised as the understanding of requirements, architecture, plans and technology change. The Vision sets the scope for the project.
Multiple stakeholders provide input to the Vision, but the Development team is ultimately responsible for capturing and documenting it. The Vision should focus on the most important stakeholder requests and features and avoid specifying requirement details.
Refer to the Vision Template for more details.
The following questions may be used to aid your discovery of information that must be captured in the Vision Document:
1. Capture the Business Overview - Who are we doing this for?
- What are we doing for them?
2. Identify the Business Problem - When did the problem arise?
- Where is the problem happening?
3. Document the Solution Overview and Scope - Who has done and/or will do something?
- What has been done and/or will be done?
- When was it and/or will it be done?
- Where was it and/or will it be done?
- Why was it and/or will it be done?
- How was it and/or will it be done?
4. Identify Stakeholders - Who are the Project Managers?
- Who are the Business Stakeholders?
- Who are the IT Stakeholders?
- Who are the other Stakeholders?
5. Identify Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities 6. Identify Stakeholder Needs and Expectations - What are the constraints that apply?
7. Identify Constraints - What are the Project Management constraints, such as deadlines?
- What are the technical constraints, such as the hosting environment?
8. Iteratively Determine Features, their Priority, and Delivery Schedule - What features must the system provide in order to meet Stakeholder needs and expectations?
- What is the system context, including dependents and dependencies?
- Project Management determines priority and iteration schedule.
See the Vision Workshop Process Questions document for a printable version of the questions above. |
