Some people view Requirement Definition and Management as two distinct activities. The first being Requirement Definition which some consider a simple process of merely writing requirements and delivering a written specification. The second is Requirement Management which some believe starts the moment that you get a baselined set of requirements. In reality, the process of Requirements Definition and Management (RD&M) is much more.
RD&M begins when you define and document the scope of your project, validate it with all stakeholders and obtain sign-off. Then with a baselined scope as the foundation, you can elicit, analyze, document and validate your requirements, prepare the requirement specification for review and approval, and once signed off by the stakeholders, baseline. Once baselined, you then apply methods and tools to manage your requirement throughout the lifecycle of the product.
All the fundamentals for effective RD&M are conveyed in this 3-day training course. We take your through the process of Scope Definition, writing requirements and managing requirements, end-to-end.
You will learn:
Bound the scope of your product and manage to that scope
Collect the scope information needed so that you can write clear, concise, complete and testable requirements during the requirements phase
Get buy-in and agreement on your Scope from all stakeholders
Apply a straight-forward process for eliciting requirements for all phases of your product’s life cycle
Write requirements to best practices and apply various techniques to avoid writing bad requirements
Quickly identify and fix bad requirements
Use rationale to clarify each requirement so that it is understood just one way and you have a history of why the requirement exists for purposes of change impact assessments, maintenance and verification
Use attributes such as verification method, allocation, and traceability to improve your requirement set
Write different types of functional and non-functional requirements
Validate your requirements as they are written to avoid preparing and submitting a bad requirement specification for review
Determine which attributes are most beneficial to your projects and products
Create a new, or improve existing, requirement management process
Conduct continuous reviews to assess the validity of each requirement
Conduct a key milestone requirement review for purposes of baselining the system requirement specification
Manage change and collect metrics
Course Objectives
Learn how to define your project and product scope so that you have a solid foundation for defining, interpreting, and verifying requirements.
Become knowledgeable of requirement best practices and the tools and techniques for avoiding requirement defects in the first place.
Learn how to conduct reviews and leverage tools such as checklists to identify and remove requirement defects as requirements are captured.
Understand the tools and techniques to simplify the process of requirement management.
Course Outline
Day 1: Scope Definition
How to bound your project (product) by defining its scope
How to clearly define the need, goals, and objectives for your product
How to define stakeholders and to involve them in early scope activities
How to develop operational concepts to ensure complete life-cycle coverage
How to determine your interfaces
How to determine if you have a reasonable risk to proceed to writing requirements
Day 2: Writing Good Requirements
Understand why we have bad requirements
How to recognize and write good requirements
Understand common mistakes when writing requirements
The value of recording rationale
Thinking ahead to verification
Levels, allocation, and tracing requirements
Documenting requirements – templates
Writing different types of requirements (Functional and Performance, Operational, Interface, Physical, -ilities, etc.)
Day 3: Manage Requirements
Why manage requirements and who manages them
Document and baseline scope
Documenting requirements – the return on investment (ROI) associated with capturing and maintaining requirement attributes:
Rationale
Verification
Prioritization
Risk
Allocation
Traceability
Validate requirements
Manage Change
Requirement management methods and tools
Lessons Learned
Intended Audience
This training is critical for those responsible for capturing and documenting requirements or defining scope. Representatives of all the product’s stakeholders will be involved in developing, reviewing, and approving requirements, and this training will benefit them and your requirement effort.
System Engineers (SE)
Requirement Engineers (RE)
Business Analysts (BA)
Subject Matter Experts (SME)
Program and Project Managers (PM)
Developers
Testers
Independent Verification and Validation (IVV) Team
Customers
Users
Marketing
Those responsible for project scope definition
Those responsible for requirements management
Those responsible for setting up and maintaining automated tools