 7
important points to keep in mind for successful requirements capture
By Priya Williams
How do you avoid project failure?
Learn to avoid some of the typical causes of project failure by investing
in clearly outlining the requirements for all parties concerned. Outlined
below are important items to keep in mind for successful requirements
capture and recording:
1. There are three levels of requirements.
a. Business Requirements - High level objectives of the project which
are recorded in the Vision and Scope Document
b. User Requirements - Task and facilities available to the end user
recorded in the Use Cases.
c. Functional Requirements - Detailed listing out of each behavior
that the software must exhibit. This along with the quality attributes
and other non-functional requirements is documented in the Software
Requirements Specification (SRS).
2. Involve the end-user or customers as much as possible during the requirements
capture stage. Identify various user groups and one representative individual
from each group for inputs regarding their specific requirements. They
could also review prototypes and the SRS to ensure completeness and effectiveness.
3. Ensure that the requirements are quantifiable and measurable. Areas
that are unclear may require more detailed analysis or even the development
of a prototype. Developing Test cases early also help reveal any gaps
in the requirements capture. Verify the completeness of the requirements
by formally inspecting the documents generated.
4. Prioritize Requirements by their relative importance. This will help
weed out high cost-low value functionality. It will also help in making
informed and critical decisions when faced with time/ resource and functionality
tradeoffs. Identify and remove any functionality which will not be used
or which do not help meet any of the business objectives.
5. Ensure that the project scope is clearly defined in the Vision and
Scope document. Expect some amount of requirements growth and buffer for
it, since rarely is the project deadline changed, additional resources
provided or any existing functionality deleted to compensate for it. Effectively
using requirement gathering methods and base lining the requirements specifications
also helps avoid scope creep. All parties involved must realize that future
additions will add to the cost.
6. Establish and enforce a clear and realistic process for change management.
Prioritize the proposed requirement changes against the requirements yet
to be implemented. Ensure that each change and its impact are sufficiently
analyzed to avoid unforeseen complexities and slipping project schedule
and deadlines. Analyze associated costs and benefits and all the associated
tasks and resource impacts. Also, be disciplined about following suitable
version control policies to ensure that all the project participants are
working on the latest requirements.
7. Finally, while it is important to have a complete set of requirements
to start design and development, it is also important not to get bogged
down at this stage. After a set of requirements has been fully identified,
development can begin on this while unclear requirements continue to get
analyzed and clearly defined. The iterative model or phased approach is
better than the waterfall model in these cases.
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