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Project Management Orientation

The Process for Defining Requirements

After the project charter is created, you will probably spend time talking to the sponsor and other stakeholders about
what they expect from the project.  They will have many ideas about what they need, some of which will conflict with one another.  As the project manager, your responsibility is to determine which of these needs the project will actually fulfill – the requirements.  Requirements define what the project will deliver.  The requirements document is a formally documented description of the sponsor's needs that must be addressed by the project.  Requirements state what the sponsor wants and what the project staff has agreed to deliver. 
  
Requirements also serve as the basis for developing project plans.  Your project team needs requirements in sufficient detail to begin work.

The process of defining requirements includes the following steps:

  1. Gather customer and stakeholder needs.
  2. Categorize these needs into either requirements or exclusions.
  3. Validate the requirements.
  4. Use the validated requirements as the established requirements baseline for the project.  

Needs

The information you gather about what the sponsor and stakeholders want translates into needs.  Needs are activities, services, products, and deliverables that are useful, required, or desired.  Your job is to turn needs into either requirements or exclusions.  Exclusions are statements of what you will not provide; that is, "not-included" requests.  They are ideas or requirements for a future project, needs that you will not be meeting or providing in the current project.

Needs are initially identified when a proposal is developed.  These needs are documented in the request for proposal, marketing letters, project charter, contract, and internal document of understanding.  These needs are usually too general to be useful to your project team.  An example of a general or high-level need is "Train employees to operate a system that does XYZ on ABC's platform."  Sometimes, details are included; but, usually the details that you and your team require to make this project successful are missing.

1: Getting Started
2: Define the Project Team
3: Team Management
4: Identify and Validate Requirements
5: Create Decomposition Structures
6: Risk Management
7: Project Estimates
8: Project Schedules
9: Change Management
10: Project Control and Execution
Defining the Project
11: Project Management Review
12: Project Closeout
13: Project Management Tool Suite
14: Self-Assessment and Final Exam
Fast Points
Concepts
Seven Keys
Case Study
WWPMM
Mentor
Check Point
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