INTRODUCTION TO REQUIREMENTS MANAGEMENT

Requirements management involves establishing and maintaining agreement between customer and developer on both technical and non-technical requirements. This agreement forms the basis for estimating, planning, performing, and tracking project activities throughout the project and for maintaining and enhancing developed software. Key activities include:

• planning the requirements phase
• establishing the requirements process
• controlling requirements changes
• minimizing the addition of new requirements (scope creep)
• tracking progress
• resolving issues with customers and developers
• holding requirements reviews

Some models, such as the Software Engineering Institute's CMMI, put some of these activities in other process areas such as requirements engineering, project management, or configuration management.

Requirements Management Plan

A requirements management plan is a component of the project management plan. Generally, the purpose of RM is to ensure customer and developer have a common understanding of what the requirements for an undertaking are. Several subordinate goals must be met for this to take place: in particular, requirements must be of good quality and change must be controlled. The plan documents how these goals will be achieved. Depending on your project standards, a variety of sections might be included in your RM plan. Some examples are:

• introduction to RM and document overview
• document scope
• issues affecting implementation of the plan, such as training on the RM tool
• applicable documents, such as policies and standards
• terms and definitions used in the plan - if your use of the term “requirement” includes several requirement categories, define it here
• methods and tools that will be used for the RM process (or the requirements for selecting a tool if one is not selected)
• the RM process, including any diagrams of the process
• authorities and responsiblities of participants
• strategy for achieving requirement quality, including traceability and change control
• appendices usually contain a discussion of quality factors, as well as references, any forms to be used in the process, and additional details not included in the main body of the plan, such as report examples

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Download an RM Plan template

Requirements Management Metrics

Requirements management can provide vital information. For example, by associating costs with requirements and using the data to estimate similar work, improvements in cost estimates are possible. The development processes must be stable enough to make the cost data comparable, however.

Some measures of the effectiveness of the requirements process include:

• the status of each requirement
• the cumulative number of changes (including the cumulative number proposed, open, approved, and incorporated into the baseline)
• effort and funds expended

Visit the Practical Software and Systems Measurement site.

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