Just some thoughts on documentation needs and requirements; According to Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies a trend is an ever increasing need for documentation.
It is a trend I also see becoming more and more real. I think of documentation in the sense of documenting software requirements, business rules, procedures, etc.
One of the reasons why the need for documentation increases is probably that the business domain becomes more and more complex, and therefore increases the need to document how the business requirements are structured and implemented. Furthermore there is a trend in the need for business requirement agility.
In order to compete businesses need to know (document) their business requirements and be able to change those requirements and implement the changes quickly – competitive businesses need to react fast to changes in their business domain.
So, two business requirements trends are present here: the need for more (better) documentation and the need to react fast on changes to the business requirements.
Documenting business requirements can be time consuming, especially if the business requirements and/or the business domain are very complex. Changing and implementing business requirements can be time consuming as well - especially if changing and implementing business requirement changes involves following an inefficient government process.
The reacting time for changing business requirements, as well as documenting business requirements, needs to be fast. There is a gap.
A trend in the business analysis area, as a consequence of the businesses requiring more documentation and faster change implementation, is:
1) The government process around changing and implementing business requirements changes needs to be lean.
At least the government process around business requirements needs to be optimised. Some of the initiatives I see in order to design a lean government process are implementing BPMS systems enabling the business people to change, implement, and document business rules themselves, without involving IT.
2) The business requirements needs to be structured in a way, not only sufficient for the initial implementation, but also sufficient for the ongoing changes
