Requirement Excellence Framework™

Why Requirements are Important

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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

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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.

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Karl Wieger’s Cosmic Truths

1. If you don’t get the requirements right, it doesn’t 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 point7. 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. You’re never going to have perfect requirements.

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

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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.

Confidential - Not for External Distribution

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The Goals of the Requirement Excellence Framework™

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

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.

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.

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.

Deliver Value ReduceTime and Cost

IncreaseSatisfaction

Achieve Success

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Requirements RiskRequirement Risk Mitigation StrategyLack 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

Conflicting Requirements • Inspect requirements using checklists