The Related Projects section of the Terms of Reference (slide 15)
Related Projects
The following projects are presently underway and dependencies with them will need to be considered during the feasibility study.
- Marketing is planning a revamp of the company web site.
The project, of which these Terms of Reference forms a part, will likely place requirements - or at least have a close dependence on - the web site project. - Upgrade to fibre broadband planned from current leased line connection
It is often a tricky problem for a business analyst when there is a related and heavily dependent project that is out of scope - like the new web site listed above.
To do a professional job, you have to identify where a possible requirement is dependent on the related project, meanwhile having to accept that they might not commit to adding support for your project's requirement. Only when they do, can you delve more deeply, otherwise you could end up wasting a lot of time. Casual conversations in the right person's ear at the coffee machine or the canteen queue can often help.
Formally, in such cases, you must have a stakeholder to turn to for guidance or, at the very least, an ambassador user who can sell to the other project the need to spend time with you.
Ideally, this need will be spotted during the production of the Terms of Reference, so that the business's expectations can be managed and resource needs planned.
