Requirements management

Why bother with requirements management?

Well-defined requirements are a key element in the success of any project.

An analysis carried out by the Standish Group, an American research firm specialized in project and value performance assessment, shows that 13% of all projects fail due to inefficient requirements management. Many experts believe that as many as 40-60% of software defects and failures can be attributed to badly-defined requirements.

Effective requirements management helps guarantee the success of a project, since by definition, a project which respects and fulfils identified requirements is a project whose end-product will satisfy the user.

The benefits of developing clear requirements before the design and coding phases include the following:

· development of a thorough understanding of user needs and wants

· elaboration of a clearly-defined solution to meet the user's needs

· identification of the benchmark against which implementation success can ultimately be measured

· smooth flow into the design phase

· improved testability and maintainability

· improved customer satisfaction and overall product quality

And what exactly are requirements?

A requirement can be described as "something which is wanted or needed in the context of a project".

However, simply defining requirements is not enough. These requirements must then be structured within requirement containers, which group together requirements of a similar type.

Requirements are usually organized into functional requirements (which state what the product or service must provide) and non-functional requirements (which describe how a functional requirement is to be provided).

A requirement can have a number of characteristics, including the following:

· a name

· a version number

· an origin (for example, the person who identified the requirement in question)

· a status

· a priority level

· a stability level