Requirements Management

Wouldn’t it be great if we could require the stock market to provide us 15% increases in our portfolio every year…or if we could simply require a sunny day for a picnic? You might be familiar with the term ‘market…

In this article we’ll explore the topic of requirements, and attitudes about identifying requirements before the design work begins. In my experience, I’ve had design resources literally state “I hope there are no requirements”.  (Unconstrained design and no requirements certainly…

Managing requirements for complex systems can be challenging, however, establishing a hierarchical framework of key questions (answered at each layer of the hierarchy) can be quite helpful. While some regulatory authorities (such as the FAA) may require various layers of documentation…

While previous articles focused on requirements writing, another element of products requirements is design constraints. A design constraint might not be a requirement in the purest sense, but must be accommodated in product requirements (and, ideally, identified as such).  Design…

In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the definition of a requirement, with a ‘story’, which is used in agile/scrum. Both requirements and stories establish a clear understanding of customer needs in the context of desired functionality. The framework for…