REQUIREMENTS LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT

Requirements Life Cycle Management is an essential business analysis skill that ensures business analysis requirements will remain useful and accurate throughout the quality management process, from the collection of information to the implementation and evaluation of the solution to the business needs. It allows you to determine if the solution fulfills the requirements and delivers the intended outcomes. Business analysis requirements are the foundation for the design and development of solutions. Requirements are dynamic and subject to change as a result of changing business needs, changes to stakeholder expectations and attitudes, market changes, technology developments, changing government or legislation requirements, among many other factors. Requirements Life Cycle Management is an organized set of activities that ensure the implementation of changes and evolve requirements while retaining overall consistency and traceability. One of the key components of Requirements Life Cycle Management is requirements maintenance. This activity ensures that requirements are continually current, complete and accurate throughout the project. Another key activity performed in Requirements Life Cycle Management is traceability. Traceability is a relationship between requirements and any other project artefact like: Business objectives, Design artefacts, Test cases and Implemented features. By ensuring traceability it is possible to assess the implications of requirement changes as well as good ways to ensure that all requirements are contributing to the business objectives. Traceability is a key element for compliance and also a quality control activity. Prioritization of requirements is also an essential task in Requirements Life Cycle Management. Not all requirements are equal. Business Analysts take into account stakeholder priorities and use techniques like MoSCoW, ranking and value analysis to prioritize requirements. By prioritizing requirements it is possible to determine the set of first requirements that will bring the most value and that should be implemented first. This activity helps effectively manage resources and to deliver projects on time with the most valuable features for the business. Requirement change assessment is another critical activity during the project life cycle. Requirements changes may come from new stakeholder requests, business strategy changes or other unexpected events. It is business analysts responsibility to assess the impact of the proposed changes on project scope, schedule, budget, quality and workforce. This assessment provides the decision makers with the necessary information to evaluate the change and, if necessary, to adopt or reject it. Achievement of approval for requirements is another important aspect of the lifecycle management. After analysis and documentation, stakeholders review the requirements and approve them. A formal achievement of approval ensures all the parties have the same understanding of the requirements and are in agreement on the desired outcomes. The approval of requirements is a baseline for any future project activity such as the design, development, test and implementation. Monitoring the status of the requirements for the project duration is also a part of Requirements Life Cycle Management. Business Analysts monitor the requirements from the point of inception to implementation and validation. Moscow, 100 dollar question are by far my favorite requirement prioritizing techniques that are used in the current technical world.