Operating Requirements
What the operating model must make true for a strategy to hold, defined before solutions harden.
Once solutions are chosen, every operating change becomes a change request. Defining the requirements first is how a strategy’s value survives design.Nearly a quarter of the value lost in transformations is lost at target-setting, before delivery begins.McKinsey, “Losing from day one,” 2021, n = 1,034
What are operating requirements?
A strategy says where the business is going. Delivery teams build what they are given. Between the two sits a question that is rarely written down: what does the operating model have to make true for the strategy to hold? The answers are the operating requirements.
They come in two kinds. Transformation Requirements say what must change in the Core, the flows of work that produce value. Enablement Requirements say what must be owned, funded, sequenced, governed, installed or corrected so that the change can actually be carried out.
The missing middle.
The records, rules, handoff checks and ownership a change depended on, never put in place. Like technical debt, it is invisible until it costs money, and it collects wherever a function has no owner.
Why operating requirements matter
Most transformation methods are built to deliver defined work. Few are built to define it. Operating requirements are how the definition gets made, once, in a form every team can hold.
The Operating Requirements Model
The Operating Requirements Model asks one question at the center, “What must the operating system make true?”, and tests every requirement against five lenses.
The five are questions every operating requirement must answer, not types of requirement. Writing requirements that pass all five, on a shared case and then on your own transformation, is taught in the Foundation Course and the Practitioner Intensive.
Learn it, then apply it to your own transformation.
How are operating requirements different from business requirements?
Business requirements usually describe what a system or project must deliver. Operating requirements describe what the operating model must make true across a whole flow, including where it must hold and who decides.
When is an operating requirement ready?
A requirement isn’t ready when it’s written down. It’s ready when all five hold: what must change, where it must hold, who owns and decides, what it takes, and how you will know.
Where does ZBTOS teach this?
In the Foundation Course, where a cohort defines the operating requirements of a shared case together, and in the Practitioner Intensive, on one of your own live transformations.
