Requirement Excellence Framework

Why Requirements are

Important

Requirements are
Important!!!
Top 2 factors in the failure of system
development contracts to meet schedule
or budget [SEI]
Inadequate requirements specification
Changes in requirements

Top 3 causes of quality and delivery

problems [Standish Group]
Lack of user input
Incomplete requirements
Changing requirements
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Aligning the Solutions for Delivery of

Business Value

Need to ensure business requirements are

captured
Need to ensure that the solution being
managed meets business requirements
Need to ensure that solutions are designed
to deliver business requirements and
comply with organization's enterprise
architecture
To deliver value the business, the Solutions must be
managed to meet agreed business requirements.
This is done through defining the requirements and
tracing the requirements
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Benefits of Requirement
Management
Lower Project Costs
Significantly reduces costly rework
Managing cost by reducing or eliminating extraneous features
Significant defects are caught at the earliest possible time instead of the most
costly time after the system has been deployed.
Promotes reuse of common requirement artifacts such as business rules,
business process models, etc.

Promotes Communications
Improves communications between team members and business owners
through a formal requirements requirements management planning process.
Offers a formal process for proposing and managing changes to requirements.
Keeps stakeholders involved through the project lifecycle including design
reviews, user acceptance testing, and deployment.

Reduces Project Risk of Failure

Good requirements significantly reduce the risk of project failure.
Provides the means to more accurately estimate timeframes and work
estimates and control project scope

Benefits of Requirement
Management
Deliver value to the business
Clear definition of business objectives helps keeps the project team and
stakeholder focused on delivering value the business.
Effective prioritization techniques helps the business deliver real value and avoid
useless functionality that will never be used.

Satisfy customer needs

Promotes clear, complete, and correct definition of business requirements.
Enables the project team to fully understand and meet the needs of the customer
the FIRST time and avoid frustrating situations that often occur when
requirements are not well defined.
Enables early identification of missing requirements, ambiguities, and errors.

Deliver projects on-time

Provides the method for controlling and prioritizing requirements, which form the
basis of accurate project schedules.
Manages requirement changes that may affect the schedule.
Reduces scope creep.
Provides the means to more accurately estimate timeframes and work estimates.

Karl Wiegers Cosmic

Truths
1.If you dont get the requirements right, it doesnt matter how well you execute the
rest of the project.
2.Requirements development is a discovery and invention process, not just a
collection process.
3.Change happens.
4.The interests of all the project stakeholders intersect in the requirements process.
5.Customer involvement is the most critical contributor to software quality.
6.The customer is not always right, but the customer always has a point
7.The first question an analyst should ask about a proposed new requirement is Is
this requirement in scope?
8.Even the best requirements document cannot and should not replace human
dialogue.
9.The requirements might be vague, but the product will be specific.
10.
Youre never going to have perfect requirements.

Source: More About Requirements: Thorny Issues and Practical Advice, Karl Wiegers

The Result of Poor

Requirements
Poor requirement problems come in a
variety of forms, however they most
problems result in a failure to adequately
specify the actual needs of stakeholders.
The net result of a poor requirement is
that the solution will either fail to have a
capability that is needed or it will include
unnecessary features. In both cases, poor
requirements run the risk of inflating the
cost of the project.
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The Goals of the Requirement

Excellence Framework

Deliver Value
Work with you
business units to
clearly define
business
objectives and
stay focused on
delivering value
to the business.

Reduce
Time and
Cost

Significantly reduce
project rework
through
implementing
effective
requirement
management
practices. Gain
efficiencies by
reusing key
requirement
artifacts across
projects. Improve
agile development
processes through
better
requirements.

Increase
Satisfaction
Keep
stakeholders,
customers, and
users involved in
the requirement
gathering process
and in
participating in
key activities to
ensure the
delivered solution
meets their
needs.

Confidential - Not for External

Distribution

Achieve Success
Clearly define the
project vision and
scope. Ensure that
key requirements
for people,
processes, and
software are clearly
defined and
managed to
achieve project
success.

Requirements Risk
Requirement Risk

Mitigation Strategy

Lack of User Involvement

Identify stakeholders
Create stakeholder involvement plan
Carefully select elicitation techniques

Unrealistic Customer
Expectations

Create project vision

Define project scope
Prioritize requirements
Validate requirements

Developers adding
unnecessary functionality

Create project vision

Define project scope
Manage requirement bundles

Constantly changing
requirements

Create requirement bundles and baseline

Mange changes to requirement bundles

Ambiguous Requirements

Train analysts how to write clear requirements

Validate requirements for understanding

Missing Requirements

Ensure all stakeholder are identified

Select multiple models to help stakeholders articulate
their needs
Validate requirements

Inspect requirements using checklists

Conflicting Requirements