Guideline: Solution: Effectively Manage Requirements and Monitor Scope
Manage stakeholders' expectations and communicate the value of the selected scope.
Main Description

Solution Description

Improve effectiveness in managing and monitoring requirements and scope (Note1) throughout the lifecycle. Improve the communication of requirements to the team. Prioritize requirements to be implemented. Provide a single approach to manage requirements.

Symptoms

The following symptoms indicate a need for improvement in effectively managing requirements and monitoring scope:

  • Excess effort required to administer,  cross-check and handle changes to requirements
  • Inability to track requirements status
  • Number of features are removed from agreed scope
  • High number of enhancement requests backlog and enhancement request aging
  • Team does not understand the priority of needed functionality
  • Constant scope change throughout the lifecycle
  • Lack sufficient traceability between requirements and other artifacts
  • Not maintaining a requirements repository, creating confusion for the team
  • No effective way to communicate the status of requirements
  • Overly committed scope

Tools

  • IBM® Rational® DOORS®
  • IBM® Rational® Rhapsody®
  • IBM® Rational® ReqPro®
  • IBM® Rational® Requirements Composer®
  • IBM® Rational® Team Concert® 

With support from:

  • IBM® Rational® ClearCase®
  • IBM® Rational® ClearQuest®
  • IBM® Rational® Focal Point®
  • IBM® Rational® Insight®
  • IBM® Rational® Method Composer®

Practices

High Impact:

Medium Impact:

Practice measures

  • Requirements Churn
    • The rate of change of requirements over a period of observation
    • The standard measure of the measure are Requirements changed after implementation, here that is assumed to mean after Build& Validate Use Cases
    • e.g. 40 during a 4 week phase = 10/week
  • High-Level Requirement Stability (Stakeholder Requirement (In)stability)
    • The rate of change of stakeholder requirements over a period of observation
    • e.g. 8 during a 4 week phase = 2/week
  • Requirement Traceability Coverage
    • The traceability and assessed coverage of System requirements of Stakeholder Requirements
    • E.g. 90% coverage
    • E.g 5 uncovered Stakeholder requirements

Solution Benefits

The primary focus of this Operational Objective is Reduce Cost:

  • Reduce Engineering cost of direct Systems Engineering and Requirements Engineering effort
  • Reduce Engineering cost of rework across all disciplines
  • Reduce the engineering cost of quality
  • Reduce third party expense e.g. Engineering contractor cost
  • In some cases it is possible to reduce or avoid contract penalties that may result from missed or unfulfilled requirements

Included here are the secondary Operational Objectives for this view of:

  • Improve System Quality
  • Reduce Time to Value for Systems Development Improvements