Requirement Analysis: How to Use This Startup-Friendly Approach (with Case Study)

As a startup founder or developer, you know that building the right product is critical to your success. But in the fast-paced, resource-constrained world of startups, it can be tempting to jump straight into coding without clearly defining what you‘re building first. That‘s where requirement analysis comes in.

Requirement analysis is the process of determining what to build before you start building it. By taking the time upfront to understand the needs of your users, you can ensure that the product you develop actually solves their problems in a way they find valuable. Skipping this step is a common mistake that leads startups to waste time and money building something nobody wants.

However, the traditional requirement analysis process, as taught in software engineering courses and used at large enterprises, is not well-suited for startups. These techniques, such as exhaustive documentation of functional specifications and Gantt charts, are too heavy-weight and inflexible for the startup environment, where speed and agility are paramount.

Fortunately, by adapting the principles of requirement analysis to the realities of startup product development, you can get the benefits of this approach while retaining your startup agility. Here‘s how:

Tips for Startup-Friendly Requirement Analysis

1. Start with the customer need

The foundation of successful products is a deep understanding of the customer and their needs. Before thinking about solutions, features, and technology, make sure you can clearly articulate the underlying problem you are trying to solve. Talk to potential users, observe them in action, study competing products they use today. Synthesize what you learn into a crisp definition of the job-to-be-done that your product will fulfill for the customer.

2. Stay high-level initially

In the early stages, fight the urge to prematurely specify every detail of the product. Instead, start by defining the key capabilities needed to address the core customer problem. Defer fleshing out the finer points until you‘ve validated the overall direction with users and stakeholders. Work from coarse-grained to fine-grained requirements. Getting too specific too soon risks wasting effort if you need to pivot based on feedback.

3. Use lightweight documentation

Rather than producing a tome of requirements documentation, capture just enough detail to facilitate meaningful conversations, but not so much that it bogs the team down. Avoid highly-formal specifications in favor of user stories, wireframes, and interactive prototypes that are quicker to create and modify as you learn. Wiki pages, Trello boards, and whiteboard sketches are all effective lightweight media for recording requirements.

4. Emphasize collaboration over hand-offs

Rather than tossing requirements over the wall to designers and developers, actively involve them in the requirement analysis process. Encourage cross-functional collaboration to uncover technical constraints and design opportunities early. Quick feedback loops between requirement gathering, design, and development help keep the product headed in the right direction and avoid expensive rework down the line.

5. Iterate with user feedback

Requirement analysis is not a one-time, upfront activity, but an ongoing process throughout product development. Get user feedback early and often by showing them work-in-progress prototypes to validate that you are building the right thing. Each round of feedback will help refine your understanding of the true requirements. Adopting a Lean Startup mindset of hypothesis testing and data-informed iteration is key.

6. Timebox your analysis

It‘s easy to fall into the trap of analysis paralysis, or spending too much time defining requirements for an unproven idea. Put a time limit on your initial requirement analysis activities before moving into implementation. You can always expand your requirements later once you have real-world usage data to inform your thinking. Better to get something simple into users‘ hands quickly and then iterate rather than overngineer based on untested assumptions.

Case Study: Requirementt Analysis for Startup XYZ‘s New Mobile App

Let‘s see this advice in action with an example case study.

Startup XYZ is building a mobile app to help busy parents coordinate carpools to their kids‘ after-school activities. They conducted the following requirement analysis steps:

First, the founders interviewed a dozen parents to understand their frustrations with carpooling today. They identified the key problems to solve, such as finding compatible families to carpool with, communicating schedule changes, and ensuring child safety.

Next, they sketched out the core capabilities the app would need to address these issues, such as user profiles, carpool matching, shared calendaring, and messaging. They explored a couple user interface concepts and storylines for how the app could streamline the carpooling experience.

To validate the direction, they created an interactive prototype using a tool called InVision and showed it to the parents for feedback. This led them to refine some of the initial requirements, such as adding a feature for establishing parent-approved lists of carpool contacts.

The product designer then created detailed wireframes for the key screens and flows based on the validated prototype. The requirements at this point were captured as a set of user stories in Trello, with acceptance criteria defined for each.

As development began, the team continued to gather input from parents testing early beta versions of the app. User feedback uncovered new requirements around carpool expense tracking and safety check-in features that were added to the backlog and prioritized.

By taking an iterative, collaboration-focused approach to requirement analysis, grounded in user feedback, Startup XYZ ensured they built a product that closely matched parents‘ real needs. The app was a hit upon launch, with strong user engagement and organic growth.

The Takeaway

For startups, requirement analysis doesn‘t have to be a burdensome formal exercise, but it also shouldn‘t be skipped entirely in the rush to begin coding. By right-sizing this practice to fit your agile startup environment, you can attain the benefits of building the right product while maintaining your speed and flexibility.

The keys are to start with the customer need, stay high-level initially, use lightweight documentation, collaborate closely across functions, iterate based on user feedback, and timebox your efforts. The case study of Startup XYZ illustrated one way to apply this advice in practice.

Mastering this startup-friendly approach to requirement analysis will help ensure you are solving the right problem for your users while avoiding waste. It‘s an investment well worth making for the success of your product and company.