This is the fifth post in the Beachcamp series. In this post we talk about requirements management and communication and provide a visual map of the relevant section of the BABOK.

Beachcamp: Day 5

Requirements Management focuses on applying the requirements management plan developed during planning of the business analysis approach and detailed activities.

The key objectives of the plan are:

  • requirements traceability management,
  • solution scope management due to changes to the requirements,
  • preparation of requirements packages to facilitate communication of the requirements.

Traceability of requirements is a crucial part of project success. Traceability enables effective impact analysis of changes to the requirements. Business users and testers use traceability to verify that the designed and developed solution delivers the requested capabilities.

On the other hand, traceability helps ensure that the external requirements (such as in compliance projects) are satisfied as well, and no penalties will occur in the future as a result of an industry audit. Well established traceability enables maintenance of requirements for re-use where it may be required.

Requirements communication aims to inform the project stakeholders about the packages of requirements which are at different stages of their lifecycle, and changes to requirements (and ultimately to solution scope) as they occur during the project.

From a practical perspective, communication of the packaged requirements should take into consideration different types of stakeholders.

It is well known from practice that the executives (project sponsor and the like) will not be interested in details as much as SMEs and solution developers and testers.

Requirements management & communication supports analysis planning and monitoring, enterprise analysis and solution assessment and validation.

Click on the image below to download a visual map of the requirements management and communication section of the BABOK:


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