Run Creativity Workshop (Process Notes 2.1.11)

When you ask stakeholders for their requirements, they may describe what is uppermost in their mind and what they think is possible. In a competitive world you also need to discover requirements that are not obviousthat is, requirements that are undreamed of but would make a difference to the success of the product. Inventing requirements is the process of exploring the work and asking what requirements you would have if you did not have the obvious (sometimes irrelevant) constraints.

Techniques for running creativity workshops include the following:

• Using ideas from brainstorming

• Asking people to imagine futuristic requirements that their grandchildren might have

• Consciously removing the constraints

• Building models and simulations

The best time to run creativity workshops is close to the beginning of the projectin other words, before people have become fixed in their ideas but after you have done a preliminary analysis of the work context, business events, goals, and stakeholders. At this point you can run a creativity workshop to encourage new and creative ideas.

For more on how to run creativity workshops, see Chapter 5, Trawling for Requirements.

Diagram 2.2. Determine Product Context