Every software development life cycle from Waterfall to Iterative to SCRUM begins with some form of requirements gathering or analysis phase.   There are lots of names for the requirements phase. Sometimes it is preceded by initiation or project planning phases, but most often it is the first phase of the SDLC. All of these initial phases typically have a focus on the product; its scope, features, architecture, quality attributes, etc. and possibly the resources, procedures, and tools to design, build, and test the product.

The missing and often forgotten activity in these early stages of the development cycle is what I like to call Stakeholder Analysis. While this effort could be considered part of an existing initial project planning or requirements gathering phase, I think this work needs to be called out as a separate phase in the SCM SDLC.   The focus of Stakeholder Analysis is external to the product; it is a focus on the surrounding environment or external aspects of the product. Who is going to use it? Who is going to buy it? Sell it?   Fund it? … and who is going to maintain the code base? This is completely different from the product-centric focus; and it’s only possible to develop awesome, complete, and clearly written requirements after understanding who is out there with a stake in our project.   An incomplete sampling of the stakeholders will lead to incomplete requirements. After all, they are the ones supplying the requirements – making this analysis a prerequisite to the requirements work.

Stakeholder Analysis => Requirements Gathering => High-level Design => …

Stakeholder Analysis belongs in SDLC. As business problems evolve over time, the software requirements need to evolve. What we seem to forget – unless we are calling it out as a separate phase – is to think about which stakeholder changes are happening over time. This activity is not only a periodical check to see if the the currently stakeholder needs have changed, but is also a check for new stakeholders to include. The list changes as business goals and sales targets change. Organization structure changes can also impact our list of project stakeholders.

The success of our projects is dependent upon a review of stakeholders included, regardless of which SDLC type we are following. Checking for changes to the list is an important thing to remember, and calling it out as a separate phase ensures that it will happen.

SCM is Stakeholder Analysis