Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
July 2013
Introduction
Requirements definition and management is recognized as a core discipline for the successful delivery of software and systems engineering projects; this discipline is also required by standards, regulations and quality improvement initiatives such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). In addition, requirements definition and management is applicable whether you are using a waterfall, iterative, agile or hybrid approach to the systems and software engineering lifecycle. Creating and managing requirements are a challenge for IT, systems and product development projects or any activity where you have to manage a contractual relationship. You must effectively define and manage requirements to meet your customer needs, while managing compliance and staying on schedule and within budget. A poorly defined requirement can have a negative impact; it can have a domino effect that could potentially lead to timeconsuming rework, inadequate deliveries or budget overruns. Even worse, a poorly defined requirement can make business processes non-compliant or cause potential damage to the organization; in worse cases, it can lead to shutdown of business. Requirements definition and management is an activity with great potential to deliver a higher and faster return on investment (ROI).
Consistent. A requirement must not be in conflict with other requirements. Verifiable. A requirement must be verifiable; the application must be suitable to address requirements. Traceable. Each requirement is distinctively identified and tracked. Feasible. A requirement must be effectively addressed within the specified cost and schedule constraints. Modular. A requirement must be easily changed without excessive effort. Design-independent. A requirement does not pose specific solutions on design.
Each requirement definition must first form a complete sentence, containing a subject and a predicate. These sentences must consistently use the verb shall, will or must to show the requirements mandatory nature and should or may to show that the requirement is optional. The whole requirement specifies a desired goal or result and contains a success criterion or other measurable indication of quality. Once these basic but necessary rules are applied, ten steps that help developers at organizations better define and manage requirements can be used.
Defining a requirement
Requirements are the foundation of systems and software development. Therefore, project teams must understand the various attributes of a good requirement. A well-defined requirement is:
Correct. A requirement is technically accurate and legally appropriate. Complete. A requirement presents a complete idea. Clear. A requirement is clearly defined and not ambiguous.
IBM Software
Writing better requirements includes providing coverage for constraints because of shortcomings in these areas. For example, performance, reliability and ease-of-use generally cannot be reengineered back into the system once developed. By taking into account all types of constraints relevant to your industry, your project teams can greatly increase their chances of success.
This rule also applies to constraints that indicate how they would be tested is a suitable way to write better requirements. For instance, how would you test the requirement The software must be highly usable? A better requirement would be, An untrained user will be able to generate a report in less than three minutes. When you ensure that your requirements are clearly testable early on in the process, you can more effectively improve project success rates and quality.
Step 6: Prioritize the requirements that deliver the greatest business value
In many cases, the route to better requirements management is to have fewer requirements. Project teams cannot always offer the luxury of implementing all customer requests, marketing ideas and business suggestions when they also have to meet budget and deadline objectives. Rather than trying to manage every requirement, project and product managers must be able to make decisions related to those requirements that bring the most value to the customer and help improve innovation. Such effective decision-making can be achieved by combining value and priority information from stakeholders and by defining the appropriate combination of requirements. By creating and maintaining this link between engineering requirements and business and customer needs, the senior management can help ensure that resources are spent efficiently. Development and implementation can similarly align technical decisions with your organizations strategy.
IBM Software
Trends should also be used to learn lessons from past systems and software projects: could issues and problems have been identified earlier on? This wealth of information must be used to build the organizations knowledge database.
creating a reuse type link. With this link, analysts can access the original requirement at any time to check allocation of implementation. Similarly, any changes made to the original requirement such as detected issues, updates, can lead to the notification of reusing teams. By implementing smart requirements reuse, your project teams can improve knowledge sharing across teams and facilitate impact analysis.
Conclusion
Requirements definition and management are among the most important activities in any project and efforts in this regard can help improve and accelerate ROI. Requirements definition and management is also the first process improvement area to focus, based on the garbage in, garbage out rule: if requirements are not clear, any other effort may help you to produce the wrong product faster. The first step to effective requirements management is to understand the simpler rules that make a requirement good. In addition, training courses and guidance can help your project teams achieve this goal. After the basic rules are in place, your specialists can further increase the quality of their requirements by implementing todays tested practices. These process improvement steps are greatly aided by implementing requirements management software that not only helps project teams to manage requirements more effectively but also helps improve their future projects by implementing lessons learned from past and present projects.
Copyright IBM Corporation 2013 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589. Produced in the United States of America July 2013 IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations applicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that the client is in compliance with any law or regulation. Please Recycle
Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the software capabilities that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. Well partner with credit-qualified clients to customize a financing solution to suit your business and development goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. Fund your critical IT investment and propel your business forward with IBM Global Financing. For more information, visit:
ibm.com/financing
RAW14059-USEN-03