Instability of Requirement Set Late in Project Lifecycle
This guideline describes how to measure and use instability of requirement set late in project lifecycle metric.
Main Description

Overview

The instability of the requirement set late in project lifecycle reflects a possibility that a project is diverging from delivering on its needed capabilities with quality and reliability. Typically, this uncertainty is an indication of churn which is not desirable.

This measure helps bring attention to getting stability of requirements earlier in the project to reduce the impact of late discovery.

Instability in requirements late in the lifecycle is often very costly and impacting given the investment that may have been made in designing, implementing and testing requirements that may no longer apply.

Measurement Method

Percentage of new, modified and de-scoped requirements during time i.

This measure applies separately or combined for each level of requirement.

Measurement Analysis

A good way to monitor the instability of the requirement set is with a line chart that shows the percentage change through the lifecycle. Any increase in instability of requirements in the latter half of the lifecycle is a warning that the understanding of business needs or software requirements are not well understood and may impact the ability to deliver the needed capabilities with quality and predictability.