The first step in any problem analysis is to make sure that all parties involved agree on what the problem is that
needs to be solved-or opportunity that will be realized-by the system. In order to help avoid misunderstandings,
it is important to agree on common terminology which will be used throughout the project. Starting early in the
lifecycle, you should define your project terms in a Glossary which will be maintained throughout the life of the project (see Develop Technical Vision).
In order to fully understand the problem(s) that need to be addressed, it is very important to know who the
stakeholders are in the conceptual vision for the project. These key stakeholders should be involved in gathering the
set of features to be considered, which might be gathered in a requirements workshop. The features can then be assigned
attributes such as rationale, relative value or priority, source of request and so on, so that dependencies and work
plans can begin to be managed.
The primary artifact in which you capture the information gained from your problem analysis is the Vision, which identifies the high-level user or customer view of the system to be
built (see Develop Technical Vision). In the vision, initial high-level requirements identify
the key features it is desired that the appropriate solution will provide. These are typically expressed as a set
of high-level features the system might possess in order to solve the most critical problems.
To determine the initial scope for your project, the boundaries of the system must be agreed upon. The Analyst identifies users and systems which will interact with the system being
developed. The users of the system can be represented by Actors in the Use-Case Model (see Identify and Outline Actors and Use Cases).
The Requirements Management Process Description is used to provide guidance on the
requirements artifacts that you should develop, the types of requirements that should be managed for the
project, the Requirements Attributes that should be collected and the approach to
requirements Traceability that will be used in managing the product requirements. It
is important to develop this plan up front (see Plan Requirements Management Strategy).
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