This blog is part of a series. You can find the first one here.
You already went through the process of collecting the requirements for an analysis, you have done your research on the topic and you already spoke with other people about it to get more clarity and additional information about it. You genuinely understood the challenge of your stakeholder and the problem you are there to help them to solve.
Getting to a good level of understanding is of course important and key to be successful because you can also go some steps further and add even more value than it is expected from you. As a matter of fact, if you look at your requirements as the minimum viable product, then you can find ways of suggesting to your stakeholders some improvements.
Moreover, you can also be proactive and find new insights in your data that might not be addressed by your stakeholders’ questions, but that can still be interesting for them! That is – of course – given you have gained that deeper understanding and done your research well.
Why is trying to go above and beyond the requirements important?
Most of the time, your stakeholders won’t know what is really possible (or not) and you are the expert. So, acting as the expert also entails that you can give recommendations yourself and you can add a little bit of you (and your inputs) in the project you are working on.
You will gain a lot of respect and trust from your stakeholders because you not only did deliver the MVP but you also spotted other things that can be relevant and you showed you did understand the problem after all.
Sometimes, you might worry that you might spend too much time on something extra. That is why communicating with your stakeholders is important. See this other blog post about it. You need of course to be sensible on the time you spend on your “extras” but if you believe in the value of those, then share your ideas with your stakeholders and pursue them!
Please follow this blog series if you are interested to drill down more into each topic.
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