Introduction
Identifying and understanding the business and operational requirements that drive any data warehousing project are essential to the project抯 successful completion. You cannot meet your clients?needs if you have not assessed and analyzed what those needs are and how you can address them.

Who Knows?

The most important part of the business requirements process is finding out who knows what the requirements should be. In most cases, the answer to "Who knows what we need to know?" is that nobody knows it all, but everyone knows a part.

And What Do They Know?

The answer to this question is they know far more than they imagine. In most cases your sources do not know they have valuable information and to what extent they are the only possible source for vital information that will help insure the project抯 success.

The Biological Knowledge Base

Systems are designed, created, maintained and operated by people who have first hand system information. This group of experts is collectively identified as the biological knowledge base that you must tap effectively in order to extract the information you require.

Play by the Rules

Your organization抯 business rules (functional requirements) and operational characteristics (non-functional requirements) are the essence of the design requirements for your project. They must be carefully cataloged and analyzed to insure internal consistency. When inconsistencies are found, you need to identify the cause of the inconsistencies (you will find that in some cases the inconsistencies are perfectly valid and reasonable) and determine the proper method(s) for adjusting the project.

How It Has to Work and Why

For each component of your project, you will need to identify the operational and business requirements. For example, there will be times when the need for 24X7 availability will supercede the need for total accuracy. Situations such as this must be taken into consideration and included in your development plan.

Cultural/Political Constraints

Cultural and political constraints will have a serious impact on your success, so they must be addressed while collecting the business requirements that define the project. Even in those cases where the political environment is opposed to the needs of the project team, you can use political relationships to increase the visibility and acceptance of your project, but only if you have a clear understanding of the dynamics involved.

Assessing/Addressing Risks

Every project faces risks, some are minor, some severe. The successful project is based on identifying what those risks are, how likely they are to occur, how serious they are and what actions are best to prevent the issues from arising. Identify the tactics to be used in dealing with the issues when they do arise, because, despite your best efforts, some will still occur.
Mine the Biological Knowledge Base
The biological knowledge base is the complete body of human knowledge and intelligence available. The readily accessible biological knowledge base primarily consists of: designers and developers, knowledge workers, end users, management, system staff, security staff and physical maintenance staff.

Everything you learn from the biological knowledge base should become a part of the business requirements for your project and be fully documented to serve as valuable material for subsequent projects.

Designers/Developers

Design and development staff members are those who are or have been responsible for creating and maintaining existing systems and are tasked with integrating future systems. You will need to gather business requirements and functional constraint information from architects (business, data and system), database administrators, database analysts and programmer analysts. Each will have their own perspective