I just watched Cliff Atkinson’s webinar “First Five Slides” and was struck by the resonance it has with some best practices in requirements engineering. Essentially Cliff suggests that the first five slides of a presentation should be about:

  • setting
  • role (of the audience)
  • point A (where the audience starts)
  • point B (where the audience needs to be)
  • solution (to make that happen)

I recommend watching the webinar to get the whole story - it is very well done. In requirements speak these slides correspond to:

  • context
  • stakeholder descriptions
  • problem pre-condition
  • problem post-condition
  • solution

The problem can also be characterized as a “capability gap”. 

A common mistake in poorly written requirements is to ignore the problem and dive straight into a solution; it takes real discipline to keep the problem separated from the solution (or even to recognise that the problem should be analysed), but folks procuring massive systems like aircraft carriers have figured this one out.

What Cliff does is show the power of resisting the presenter’s natural inclination to focus on the solution, but rather to start by focusing on what the audience (the stakeholders) need to hear, which is why they should care in terms of their world being changed. This is what engages the audience’s emotions and keeps them around for the pitch.

(I updated this posting in August to use the word “audience” rather than “user” in the first set of bullets - hard to shake the RM mindset!)

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