Most Useful Requirements Processes

Understand and communicate requirements that align yout IT priorities
with your business needs.

No process is more fundamental than the process of defining and managing business and technical requirements. It's no surprise that studies cite inaccurate, incomplete, and mismanaged requirements as the primary reason for project failure.

The Requirements-engineering process consists of two major domains: definition and management.

Best practices:

Elicit Requiremements:

• Define the vision and project scope.
• Identify the appropriate stakeholders.
• Select champions (Voice of the customer).
• Choose elicitation techniques (workshops, questionnaires, surveys, individual interviews).
• Explore user scenarios.

Analyse Requirements: verify they are complete and achievable

• Create analysis models.
• Build and evaluate prototypes.
• Prioritize requirements.

Specify Requirements:

• Look for ambiguities.
• Store requirements in a database.
• Trace requirements into design, code, and tests.

Validate Requirements:

• Review the requirements through a formal peer review.
• Create test cases from requirements.

Manage Requirements:

• Manage versions.
• Adopt a change control process.
• Perform requirements change impact analysis.
• Store requirements attributes.
• Track the status of each requirement.

Applying requirements best practices lead to higher satisfaction for your customers.

These are highlights from Matts Klassen's article: Achieve Useful Requirements Processes.