4 | The Quest for Good Requirements
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Brooks also argues that systems are best developed incrementally. Start with something small that you
understand, and improve and expand it rather than building the penultimate version at the outset. This
approach is the foundation for iterative and agile methods.
Requirements Management
Requirements management is the process of defining and maintaining the requirements that form the
agreement between the project team and the stakeholders. A requirements management plan (RMP)
is a document that defines the process, procedures, and standards for eliciting, documenting, storing,
and updating the requirements. The typical requirement management activities include the following:
Figure 1. Requirements Management Activities
Requirements management is generally supported by the use of requirements tracking or
requirements management tools. There are numerous commercial, free, and open source tools that can
be used.
Requirements Process
The process of requirements specification can be broken down into discovery (elicitation), analysis,
modeling and documentation, communication, and validation (see Figure 2.) As part of the process, the
project team must also negotiate the relative importance of each requirement so that an appropriate
prioritization can be established. The requirements that are considered to be implementable within the
allocated time and budget are called the project scope or simply scope.
The project team generally implements the requirements in order of priority, starting with the most
important ones. The reason is simple: most projects have limited time and budget, and, commonly,
not all requirements can be addressed. By the time we run out of time and money, the stakeholders
would want the most important requirements taken care of. While this sounds simple, establishing
and negotiating the priorities of requirements can often be very difficult and politically challenging.
Stakeholders don't want to prioritize for fear of not getting what they want; the project team does not
want an unlimited scope, as they know that they likely cannot accomplish everything with the allotted
resources.
Figure 2. Requirements Management Process
