Requirements Analysis

As technology continues to evolve, the need for a flexible and adaptable requirements analysis team has never been greater. Paradigm shifts in conducting business through advancements such as service oriented architecture (SOA) have left many companies struggling to bridge the gap between business and technology.

At VerticalCloud, we believe that well-defined requirements are the cornerstone of successful technology implementations. Clarity is power. Without a clear direction of what needs to be accomplished, project teams falter and valuable company resources are wasted.

VerticalCloud Business Analysts can adapt to your project methodology or implement our own proven and time-tested iterative requirements analysis process. With a tool box of technology products, templates, and methodology, the VerticalCloud team employs a hybrid approach to helping your organization meet project objectives:

• VerticalCloud Project Tracker is a simple to use web-based project management support tool that is made available to all customers who engage our requirements analysis consulting services. The power of our tool is that it can be customized on-the-fly to meet the unique needs of your particular organization. VC Project Tracker allows your team to control project scope, requirements, issues, risks, and change requests throughout the system development lifecycle.
• VerticalCloud Traceability is an add-on product for VC Project Tracker that is fully customizable to your unique needs. VC Traceability is a full-featured requirements traceability and management suite designed to assist your project team throughout every phase of the systems development lifecycle.
• VerticalCloud Work Products, Templates, & Maturity Models provide your organization with a tool box of guidelines and roadmaps to kick start an IT project while ensuring objectives are met at every stage gate. The founders of VerticalCloud developed the VerticalCloud Systems Delivery Methodology (VSDM) from real-world systems implementation experience for some of the world’s leading companies. We also leverage VSDM internally to deliver the suite of VerticalCloud SaaS products available today.

Transforming Ideas into Requirements

VerticalCloud Business Analysts work closely with you to extract the specific objectives of your idea and transform them into useful requirements that can be designed, developed, tested, and delivered. Think of our business analysts as the syringe that pulls the relevant story line out of the JAD (joint application design) sessions. The relevant story line is succinctly translated into a use case that can be leveraged by your application development team to write useful technical specifications. Our Business Analysts focus on delivering requirements that clearly showcase the value that the end user will gain from the system.

The VerticalEdge

Our Business Analysts often refer to their unique skill set as the VerticalEdge. With laser focus on how they can extract your project storyline, having the VerticalEdge involves:

• Studying your business objectives to extract your true project storyline. Interviewing project members, stake holders, and end users. Employing the soft skills necessary to translate what is needed by the business into well-defined requirements.
• With well-defined requirements, your project team wastes no time getting started. Our Business Analysts deliver the story line of your project in a well-constructed 3 minute video that succinctly highlights the critical success factors of your project. By not burying this information in project documentation and keeping it top-of-mind, your project team remains clear as to what the critical success factors are for the project. The video is securely hosted on VerticalCloud’s streaming video service, making it easy for stakeholders to share with one another or customers.
• At the onset of each project, our Business Analysts does not to get tied up in the details of the project. The focus upfront is on bringing clarity to the high-level business requirements. Without clarity, the project team cannot sustain the motivation needed to successfully collaborate and deliver on the project objectives.
• After clarity is achieved, the real work begins. All of the project requirements are fully documented, but more over – the VerticalCloud Business Analyst(s) assigned to your project is trained in delivering the message of each requirement with a short 2-3 minute video clip with animated art work demonstrating the complexities of the technology.
• VerticalCloud is a pioneer in delivering video to explain both business and technical requirements on large IT implementations. Project team members can easily click share with stakeholders, saving valuable time that would otherwise be caught up in meetings re-explaining the same concepts to project stakeholders.

At VerticalCloud, we do things a bit different than everyone else. We provide service to our clients, not just software or people. That is what we call the VerticalEdge. We’re unique in our delivery of SaaS products and even more unique in our delivery of consulting services.