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Manage Requirements
Managing requirements is a key
process area; the better the communication and management of requirements,
the better chance of project success. The first step to any effective
requirements management process is recording the requirements that have been
gathered. This ensures accurate communication and management of the
requirements as they evolve. Documents are a natural format for recording
requirements because they provide context and accommodate supplementary
information.
Documents, though useful for
requirement capture, are not an optimal environment to prioritise and organise
information; these are activities ideally suited for a database. It
follows that using aoftware that links a database with captured
requirements provides an optimal solution. Such software development
tools leverage the power of a database and the freedom of word-processing for
more effective requirements management, by
tracking organisation, prioritisation, relationships and changes of
requirements.
Assigning attributes such as
priority, difficulty, status, owner, and version number help the management of
requirements in a way that is impossible with documents alone. Related
requirements can be linked so that as change occurs to one requirement its
impact on other related requirements can be identified, providing visual
notification of change and its effect across the project. This ability to
perform impact analysis enables quick, informed decisions for scope management
or resource allocation.
As requirements evolve, each
modification made can be captured and tracked. This audit trail of change gives
the who, what, why and when a requirement modification was made, helping the
analysis of its necessity and impact across the project.
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