Requirements & Architecture workshop

We know from experience that seeing is believing. The actual demonstration of functionality is worth much more and is far more beneficial than descriptions and statements of intent.

When setting up IT architectures, it is a good idea from the start to adopt an interdisciplinary focus where all stakeholders and those responsible for the technology work together. An agile (scrum-based) approach has proved successful here, one where a common backlog (list of requirements) is drawn up and prioritised on the basis of various aims and requirements. To this end, we have developed a workshop programme for you.

How the workshop is structured 

Firstly, it is important to develop a shared understanding of the motivation, vision, aims and use cases. With this in mind, we conduct brief interviews (on the phone or in person) with the relevant stakeholders, who should then be present at the actual workshop.

Based on the shared understanding, we work out the requirements and the specific approach and define the necessary epics. An epic describes the aim of a requirement on a high level of abstraction. The epics are then transferred to a backlog, which is drawn up in the form of a so-called story map. Story mapping is a technique that provides a clear overview of the ‘big picture of requirements’ in due consideration of the client’s focus and permits the visualisation of priorities, chronologies and content-related dependencies.

In our experience, a condensed approach such as this, in which all stakeholders are involved, produces very good results and leads to a shared understanding of the tasks.

The backlog can then be used in the context of a release or sprint plan to define the necessary ‘stories’ for implementing the epics. In this instance, the stories are work packages, which – in contrast to epics – can be turned into an executable artefact by the scrum team in a sprint.

Besides your and our experts, an agile coach will take part in the workshop. Their role is to serve as a neutral guide and use their experience to ensure that the workshop results are suitable for implementing at a later date by an agile team.

The results of the workshop will subsequently be summarised by inovex and made available as a photo protocol.

Target group: Stakeholder, IT experts, user