Thursday, August 13, 2009

Requirements Definition and Management

By Katlego Raboshakga

Many software development projects of today are still plagued by delays, running over budget and at times even creating systems not useful to stakeholders.

According Oberg, Probaso and Ericsson, the most often neglected factor, in successful system delivery, is the mismanagement of user requirements. They define requirements management as: “a systematic approach to eliciting, organizing and documenting the requirements of the system, and a process that establishes and maintains agreement between the customer and the project team on the changing requirements of the system.”

It is clear from this definition, that for projects to have a higher probability of success, these activities need to be carefully planned, coordinated and executed. The right techniques, tools and people have to be applied at all stages of the requirements management process to minimise the chances of getting undesirable results.

Throughout a system development project, from user requirements elicitation to system implementation, requirements change. To manage and control requirements change in a smooth and manageable fashion, the business analyst has to ensure that constant communication and consensus on the requirements between all the stakeholders are facilitated.

This has the implication that the business analyst has to be an excellent communicator, as the process of requirements definition is rich in person to person and group communication and negotiation. Any misunderstandings between stakeholders and the business analyst, or between analysts and developers will inevitably result in a system that does not satisfy the stakeholders.

New requirements and changes to existing requirements should be proactively monitored and impact assessments done on the baseline requirements. Unbridled requirement changes often significantly impacts on the system delivery life cycle, and project resource requirements.

References:

Borland (May 2009), Effective Requirements Definition and Management

Oberg R., Probaso L. And Ericsson M., Applying Requirements Management with Use Cases, Available from http://www.sos-portals.com/Interesting%20Articles/Manage%20Requirements/RUP_AppReqMgmt.pdf, (Accessed 14 August 2009)

Kimball R., Reeves L., Ross M. And Thornthwaite W. (1998), The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, Practical Techniques for Building Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Systems 2nd Edition, Wiley

2 comments:

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  2. First of all thanks for a great article. It outlines the issues faced in most of the projects that we have been involved in during the years.

    We have developed a 100% web-based platform (ReqMan) for gathering and organizing requirements for Software Requirement Specifications.

    The platform allows you to easily define the above structure and save it as a template for future use. You can also invite all stakeholders to suggest requirements and have the requirement specialists / technical writers review the suggestions and add them to SRS.

    Best of the entire platform is completely free and there is no catch. The platform is used globally from 1 person projects to some of the largest IT companies in the world.

    Best regards,
    Martin Pedersen
    www.requirementone.com

    ReplyDelete