Requirementeering

David Randall has more than twelve years experience in Business Analysis, systems development, telecommunications and billing systems, including recent experience in FMCG, logistics and Government.

David convenes Sydney’s only Business Analysis Special Interest Group hosted at the Australian Computer Society, and is responsible for the Communications Portfolio on the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Australia Chapter.

• +61 402 412 486
• david@requirementeering.com
• PO Box 47 Darlinghurst NSW 1300

Core Skills & Competencies

In his business and IT career, David has been involved in a variety of projects — covering all phases of the software development lifecycle — and has gained an in-depth experience
in business systems analysis, modelling and requirements analysis, management and documentation.

In the past, he has managed development teams and IT projects; conducting project reviews, writing scopes, briefs and RFQs, and facilitating team, change control and post implementation meetings.

Areas of Expertise

• Interviewing — talking with individuals and groups about their needs, questions and active listening to distinguish true needs and to surface essential requirements information
• Analysis — evaluate information to understand requirements, reconciling conflicts, deconstructing high-level information, and abstracting detailed information
• Negotiation — helping project stakeholders prioritise their requirements and resolving conflicts
• Mentoring — teaching and guiding others develop their skills in modelling and business analysis
• Facilitation — leading workshops for project launches, requirements elicitation, card sorting, and stakeholder walkthroughs
• Documenting — communicating information effectively to customers, marketing, managers and technical staff through clear and concise requirements and project documents
• Modelling — represent complex requirements and business information in graphical form; including techniques such as class diagrams, data flow, process flow and wire-frame prototypes and writing use cases models, their descriptions and scenarios.

Positions & Roles

Australia Tourism — 2007 to Present

• Contract Management System — assist business teams in clarifying business process, create enthusiasm, help identify and promote business benefits and investment objectives for a bespoke system to manage contracts with Suppliers, Vendors and Business Partners. Business Analysis included writing the business and system requirements, prototyping, and modelling business domain, data structure, data flow, workflow and use cases.
• Online Budgeting and Forecasting System — refine the scope, resolve conflicts, hold workshops, write requirements, and develop prototypes, use cases, test cases and help documents for a bespoke Budgeting & Forecasting that Integrates into Oracle Financials. Also, wrote the requirements, which formed the basis of a Request for Quote. This system will be deployed in Tourism Australia’s offices around the world.

Hats Holdings PL (Chrisco Hampers) — 2005 to 2007

• Business Process Analysis for Logistics Track & Trace System, September 2007 — recently completed use case descriptions and business requirements refinement for a project nearing completion. This two-million-dollar project is to implement a track and trace solution. The use cases will be the basis for running the pilot and involved document analysis, interviewing, iterative modelling and user walkthroughs.
• Business Process Reengineering, 2007 — conducted workshops, elicited needs, modelled and documented a “to be” business process for mail-order catalogue development. This complex, cross-functional business process takes a year to complete one cycle, and has interdependencies to all of the other major business processes. David is currently participating in the creation of the project brief for the long-term BPR project.
• Information Technology Strategy Team, 2007 — was a member of a 5-member team to design a business strategy for the IT department. The project involved examining the talent within, consumers of and resources available to the IT department. Team members discussed the availability, appropriateness and relevance of new technologies and methodologies, setting these against the company’s business and IT constraints.
• Online Gift Registry for a Major Retail Chain, 2007 — Chrisco was in negotiation with a major Australian retail chain to outsource their gift registry. David interviewed senior management and consultants, refined the scope of the project, wrote requirements, personas and usage scenarios, produced wireframe diagrams and analysed inter-company data flow options. This material was handed to an external vendor to produce a functioning web prototype.
• Customer Relationship Management System, 2006 — this multi-million-dollar project is to replace the company’s legacy CRM. The challenge in writing the requirements for this project was to lead stakeholders to take ownership of the new system and to prioritise their requirements. Activities included developing an “Agile Requirements Process”, writing functional and non-functional requirements, personas, scenarios, use cases and supporting material such as domain level class diagrams, story boards and low to medium fidelity prototypes. David adopted a “user centred design” approach, combining interaction design techniques with requirements analysis. Visual Studio Team Systems was used to store scenarios, quality of service requirements and other requirements process artefacts.
• Project Scoping, 2005 — conducted interviews and document review to write a new vision and scope document for a major development project. The project had already failed twice. This re-scoping was necessary to help refine the stakeholder expectations.

SIMplus —2002 to 2005

At SIMplus, David performed a wide variety of roles including business analysis, managing a business analysis team, project management, database design, report analysis and data analysis. David held these positions:

• Senior Business Analyst, Information Technology — 2004 to 2005
• Team Lead, Business Analysis Team — 2002 to 2004

Projects at SIMplus ranged from writing the requirements for new online systems, analysis and implementation of new rate plans, and root cause analysis for failed business systems. Below are some of these projects:

• Wireless Internet Resale, 2005 — SIMplus is a mobile service provider; this project was to bring wireless Internet product to market and combine it into a “converged” invoice. This was a companywide project, pushing SIMplus into an entirely new area of service provision, affecting every area of the business and its systems. David provided a review of existing business rules to help the business adapt, facilitated workshops and problem resolution sessions, requirements gathering, analysis and documentation.
• Prepaid Mobile Sales, 2004 — developed and managed requirements to implement prepaid mobile product into the business, and to develop an on-line sales system. This project involved on-line sales process analysis, data analysis and integration, and analysis of downstream affects of major changes to an already complicated legacy billing system.
• On-line Customer Re-contracting System, 2004 — documented the business rules for upgrading customers to new plans, wrote and managed the requirements for a new secured online system for authenticated mobile dealers. The system, which was intended for use by sales people in retail outlets and in call centres, presented a major challenge in that it was to incorporate and automate the cool-off legislation in each State. With the assistance of the corporate legal team, David conducted a review of the existing business rules, facilitating resolutions where there were conflicts.
• On-line Wholesale Fulfilment System, 2003 — reviewed existing wholesale process and systems developing requirements for a new system, which included process improvements and new features including a secured online wholesale ordering. David went on to project-manage this development to completion.

RSLCOM — 1994 to 2002

Fixed Wire Telecommunications Carrier and Service Provider At RSLCOM, David’s roles included business analysis, VB and SQL Server (database) development, development team management and database design. David held these positions:

• Project Manager, Project Implementation Team — 2000 to 2002
• Team Lead, Systems Development Team — 1998 to 2000
• Analyst Programmer, Billing and Operations Team — 1994 to 1998

David participated in many projects from data migration to CRM implementations to database design and implementation. Below are some of these projects:

• CRM and Billing Operations Software, 2000 — travelled to the UK to provide advice for this multi-multimillion-dollar purchase, then participated in the detailed business analysis for an eventual successful implementation.
• Billing and Operations Support System, 1999 — analysed, designed and implementation of a system to receive feeds from company switches and from Telstra, built a service provisioning system for customer service that integrated with the billing system.
• Other projects include — data analysis and implementation of inter-company data migration projects, requirements and development of billing operation changes. Development of requirements for outsourced document management system, the database design and development for Telstra E-Billing Integration

Recent Studies

• Business Process Modelling Notation, 2007 — Object Training
• Interaction Design, 2006 — University of Technology Sydney, (HD)
• Requirements Engineering, 2005 — University of Technology Sydney (HD)
• Global Software Development, 2005 — University of Technology Sydney (HD)

Recent Workshops & Conferences

• Board Master-class, 2006 — Australia Business Arts Foundation (ABaF)
• Building Relationships & Securing Donations, 2006 — ABaF
• 10th Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering, 2005 — Deakin Uni, Melbourne

Other Activities

• Board of Directors, International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Australia Chapter — elected to sit on the Board of the IIBA in Australia, late last year; David is the Communications director for this organisation.
• Business Requirements Analysis Special Interest Group (BRASIG) — hosted by the Australian Computer Society (ACS), David is the co-convener of a special interest group for BAS. BRASIG features guest speakers on various topics that concern BAs.
• Board of Directors, Sydney Philharmonia Limited — David is the Vice President on the Board of the premier Australian arts organisation. David is also the chair of the Communications Subcommittee, which considers strategy for communication to company’s audience, members and the public.
• Expansion of a Beauty Salon — currently setting up a chain of salons in Qld — activities include market analysis, business planning, budget forecasting etc.

Typical Activities

The following are the typical activities that David performs on a requirements project:

• Scope and clarify project objectives
• Identify and document stakeholder needs and roles
• Gather requirements using interviews, documents, workshops, storyboards, prototypes and workflows
• Prioritise: assist stakeholders to negotiate and prioritise
• Specify the business, user and system requirements
• Model requirements using use cases, data flow, class, prototypes, storyboards, wire-frames, UML etc
• Validate requirements by organising reviews and walk-throughs
• Change: manage changes through change control and triage processes
• Verify: review testing outcomes to ensure that the requirements were interpreted and implemented correctly

Modelling Skills

• Use Case Diagrams — to summarise functions and user interactions
• Use Case Descriptions — to detail user and system interactions
• Object Diagrams — to provide examples of how business entities relate to each other
• Class Diagrams — to classify business entities and their relationships
• Data Flow Diagrams — to show how data flows in and out of business and system processes
• Business Process Modelling Notation — to show business system workflow
• Card Sorting — to assist people organise information and to elicit missing information
• Wire-frame Diagrams and prototyping sessions — to show how system functionality may flow and be navigated and how users may interact with the system
• Entity Relationship Diagrams — to classify business data and show how it might be conceptually structured and to analyse data relationships
• Work Breakdown Structures — to identify the task that need to be done
• Personas — to show the goals and motivation of different targeted users in interacting with a system interface
• Scenarios — to illustrate how users and systems interact
• Cause and Effect Diagrams — to facilitate root cause analysis