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The change of the RM&E process usually entails large changes in the current development culture in an enterprise. Therefore this change must be planned with care. Developers and senior management must be convinced, so that this change becomes a success.

HOOD pays attention to the key issues in Change Management:

• Consider how the activities look from the perspective of the people being affected by the changes.
• Be aware of the barriers to change and work to ease the situation.
• Pay attention to the way that mistakes are received.
• Find the people that form opinion, the virtual leaders. The step needs to be taken from "Heroics" to repeatable, defined and optimised processes.

HOOD supports you in overcoming of barriers during the introduction of a new RM&E culture in your enterprise.

To improve the RM&E process in your organization HOOD offers the following solutions. We can customize these solutions to your organizational needs if required.

• RM&E-Assessment and Planning of Improvement Initiatives
• RM&E Process Definition
• Support of Pilot Projects
• Key People Education
• Planning and Operation of an RM&E Academy
• Planning and Operation of an RM&E Support Centre
• Planning and Support of Improvement Initiatives (Managing Change)

These solutions help you to improve your Requirements Management and Engineering in a large scope, but also give you answers on specific questions, e.g. how the Systems Requirements Specification should be implemented.

HOOD offers most of these solutions as individual services. Click on the links to see a more detailed description of the services we offer in this area.

In the following, the solutions offered are briefly described.

In workshops HOOD will evaluate together with you the current status of your organization regarding Requirements Management and Engineering (RM&E). In these workshops initiatives are developed to improve the associated processes. Together with your team an experienced HOOD Consultant will specify, which workshops are necessary and how many.

At the end a plan is available for the introduction and/or improvement of all activities and processes in the area of RM&E in your enterprise.

HOOD helps to determine you your current position regarding RM&E and to define activities for going ahead.

 

The first step in the process definition is an analysis of the existing processes. The analysis concentrates on the RM&E aspects of the product development process, identification and description of the Stakeholders of the project, the interfaces to customers, suppliers, partners, marketing, and on the current data model. A description of the current processes is prepared.

HOOD helps you define a new or changed RM&E process and seamlessly integrate it into your current development process.

Using pilot projects is a good method to overcome lack of psychological safety in change and fear of loss of identity or integrity. With an adequate pilot project it can be shown that the new processes and methods are successful and yield benefit.
HOOD supports the people in the project with the application of the new methodology. We support them in their daily work, train them on the job, and give advice how to best solve problems.

HOOD helps you to run pilot projects successfully.

RM&E improvement initiatives are strongly dependent on the organization that wants to change and must be treated as project by itself. This means that aims, milestones and responsibilities have to be defined and agreed. The choice of the implementation strategy results from a study of the customer situation. There is no easy cookbook technique that is right in every case.

Very often HOOD chooses the method of "key people education", which is a longer but less risky way. This method tries to convince all people involved of the probable success of the planned actions by creating a team of "internal champions / experts".

A small group of interested employees of the organization will be educated to become RM&E experts. These internal experts carry the RM&E knowledge into their teams and implement them in their development projects of the company. This internal knowledge transfer needs support activities like education of all project members in RM&E basics (e.g. through the RM&E Academy) and/or help for the project through a RM&E Support Centre. The key people should meet regularly to discuss obstacles, problems and successes of Requirements Management within their projects.

HOOD supports you in defining a strategy for RM&E improvement and helps you to implement that strategy.

To achieve a long-term improvement to a Requirements Management and Engineering process an RM&E Academy should be set up. The RM&E Academy allows achieving the implementation objectives in the areas time, cost, and quality permanently.

The Academy consists of a set of training courses and workshops that form the basis of an education program for employees in the field of Requirements Engineering and Requirements Management. Selecting the appropriate courses and tailoring them to the needs of your organization is the basis for the Requirements Management and Engineering Academy.

The Academy will train over time all employees involved with requirements. On an ongoing basis it will ensure that the "development teams" are kept up-to-date with respect to RM by the use of follow-up training. The Academy will also be available to give guidance, through workshops, for managing the requirements of specific projects. All courses and workshops will be tailored to the needs of your organization.

HOOD supports you in implementing an RM&E Academy and runs it for you.

From HOOD's experience it is not sufficient only to define new RM&E processes, start projects with workshops and to train the participants of the project. Especially in the first projects, if the Requirements Engineering knowledge of the project team is not sufficient, further support through RM experts is necessary.

For ongoing support of your development projects a Requirement Management and Engineering Support Centre should be installed. This RM&E Support Centre takes over tasks like giving information to new projects, supporting projects with RM&E consultancy or creating project-specific enhancements of the tool environment. HOOD consultants and Requirement Engineering experts of the enterprise can work together in this centre.

HOOD supports you with setting up and operating an RM&E Support Centre.

The change of the RM&E process usually entails large changes in the current development culture in an enterprise. Therefore this change must be planned with care. Developers and senior management must be convinced, so that this change becomes a success.

It is important that at all times it is considered how the activities look from the perspective of the people being affected by the changes. Each activity must be planned with the idea of supporting change, of supporting the people we expect to change, of supporting the process of creating a new way of doing things, a new culture. We know that this can be a stressful time and without care and planning, anxiety and fear of the unknown may express itself as resistance to change and criticism of the new ideas. We aim at finding the real reasons for anxiety, which are not always what people say or think the reasons are.

People are not resistant to change. They are however often resistant to the way they may feel forced into a situation in which they feel unconfident. We are aware of the barriers to change and work to ease the situation.

Pay attention to the way that mistakes are received. Are they opportunities to learn or are they the trigger for punishment and ridicule? Do the management react in a way that makes people willing to take a risk at trying something new or do management in fact act to stifle change?

We seek to find the people that form opinion, the virtual leaders. If these people are "on message" the rest of the organisation will follow. If these people are against the introduction of new processes in the RM&E area, it will be very hard if not impossible to achieve change. This is the hardest step to make. These people may be regarded as heroes, and the very changes being introduced may take away this status. The step needs to be taken from "Heroics" to repeatable, defined and optimised processes.

The major steps for a successful change process are:

• Overcoming of Barriers: Removing the negative motivation against change.
• Unfreezing: Introduction of positive motivation for change.
• Change: Learning. First trying various methods, then narrowing down and concentrating on a chosen solution.
• Refreezing: Supporting and reiterating the desired behaviour. The reaction of Management to crisis situations is essential to support culture change.

All our RM&E process improvement activities are accompanied by acceptance creating actions. When planning activities like key persons education, RM&E academy etc. actions are interspersed, which are attributed to the points above specified.

HOOD supports you in overcoming of barriers during the introduction of a new RM&E culture in your enterprise.