REQUIREMENTS MANAGEMENT

JUNE 13, 2013 ANIKET S SHARMA LEAVE A COMMENT

The gap between what we know and

what we think we know is filled by the knowledge and the experience. What we know is
about the facts and what we think we know succinct the assumptions. This is marked as the
baseline for the business analysts (or the one seated on the chair of BA) during the
requirements management and thus the BAs have to strive always to maintain the
credibility of the requirements throughout the project life-cycle. The most appropriate way
to mitigate the chances of bogus requirements getting developed or documented is to frame
questions and avoid muddiness. The BAs are advised to focus on the different aspects of
the requirements and then frame questions to nullify the chances of any ambiguity during
the requirement elicitation and documentation.

What is Requirement?

Referring to the world of dictionary, the requirement is described as, Something which is
necessary and must be fulfilled to achieve the result. Requirement word itself is self-
explanatory and sometimes begets a cringing feeling (especially with the phrase change in
requirement). But this should not happen with the BAs as they have the primary tasks to
manage and maintain the requirements credibility throughout the life-cycle of the project.

Requirement management is one of the knowledge areas in the IIBA BABOK, bible for all
amateur and professional business analysts. This book demonstrates the activities and
considerations to manage the requirements. The requirements are expressed to mass and
diverse audience and thus it should be managed and communicated in such a way that the
stakeholders with different backgrounds can understand easily. Requirement management
assists in measuring and analyzing the simulations developed for the change requests and
thus helps in achieving the business goal and objectives. BABOK classifies the
requirements as below:
 Business Requirements: It defines the higher level goals and objectives of the
organization with the details of the reasons of the project initiation.
Stakeholder Requirements: It defines the needs of the stakeholder(s) and the steps
taken to cater the same. The different stakeholders are provided with different formats of
the same set of requirements e.g. the business owner is more interested in understanding
the end product and the numerical figures while the developer is interested in knowing
the cases and techniques to be followed to develop the same.
Solution Requirements: The proposed solutions for the business and stakeholder
requirements are discussed under this section. The solution requirements are further sub-
categorized to: functional and non-functional requirements.
Transitions Requirements: It defines the capabilities of the implemented solution for
smooth facilitation of the current state of the enterprise to the future state. These are
temporary requirements and are developed when both the current and new solutions are
in place.
Requirements elicitation techniques help the business analysts to complete the documents
and then they are properly communicated to all the stakeholders for approval and
development, but the tasks of business analysts do not end here. He must have to take care
that the requirements should not go off the skull and the credibility of the requirements are
maintained throughout the project. This process or technique is covered under the
knowledge area Requirements management and communication as defined in IIBA
BABOK. Requirement management maintains the importance of the requirements and thus
the complete process is divided into different stages which can be mapped with the
different phases of development life cycle, as below:

Stages of Requirement
Management Different phases of SDLC

Investigation Planning

Feasibility Analysis

Design Design

Development

Construction and Testing Verification or Testing

Release Implementation
 Maintenance

Disclaimer: 5 stages of requirement management is described in the training courses of

Villanova University

Requirement management is thus identifying and monitoring the needs of the business and
the stakeholders and to apply the most suited and accepted solution. It helps in
understanding the effects of the change requests on the current state and also helps in
linking the business goals and objectives to the actual solution that is constructed and
delivered. The key points to remember for requirements management throughout the
project life-cycle can be, thus, defined as:

Elicitation from authentic source: It is advised to elicit the requirements from the
responsible sources to avoid any ambiguity and rework in the future. E.g. Business
Requirements should be elicited from the business owners and the fellows who are the
investors and directly related to the profit-loss figures and on the other hand the different
stakeholders should be involved to understand the stakeholders requirements. No matter
how less or more influencing the stakeholder is but his vote and advice should be
considered at the time of completing the stakeholders requirements. Business analysts
are advised to update the documents referring the authentic sources. Sometimes the use
of tools is preferred for graphical representations, if required.
Validation: Once the requirements are documented, the major responsibility comes to
get them validated from the different sources. BAs have to take care of the validation of
the requirements to maintain the credibility of the same throughout the development.
Should there any deviation in the requirements, the same be documented and validated
to avoid future re-work. The technical discussions are also very important and thus the
BAs have to take care that the mentioned requirements are feasible and can be
accommodated with the technological scope.
Defining the priorities: The set of requirements once documented and validated are set
for the development and implementation but what should go first is defined by the
business analysts considering the business and stakeholder requirements. The solutions
proposed for the business and stakeholders requirements should be analyzed and then
the priority of the requests should be defined. Its recommended to maintain the back-
log of the requirements and normally BAs are the owners of this back-log container to
add/remove the change requests keeping in mind the baseline requirements. Agile
methodology strongly supports the back-log definition.
Version control and Traceability: Management of requirements demands the proper
records of the version change or updates in the requirements (requirement variance).
These changes should be version controlled for further auditing and to compare the
actual result with the expected result. This version change is pretty useful in the cases of
change management to keep the record of the baseline requirements. These recorded
requirements should be traceable to all the solution components for better impact and
risk analysis.
Requirements are the spine for the development of any application and till the application is
live the changes are unpredictable. BAs therefore, play a very crucial role in managing the
requirements for the ease of the development team and the business owners. Fixing the
issues during the development is much easier and economical than to fix them as a part of
the change request or bug-fix.

Requirement management is thus an important part of the business analysts task-list and
its up to them how they manage the momentum as the project progresses.