Ensure Project Success With Requirements Management Tools

By Author: Martin Lobo
Total Articles: 355
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Wikipedia defines requirements management as “the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders.” It is a crucial phase of the software development lifecycle because only when the customer requirements are clearly and accurately captured, the software development team can ensure customer satisfaction by developing software that conform to customer needs and requirements. Documenting the life of a requirement known as requirements traceability is an important aspect of requirements management. Traceability helps the software team to not only find out the origin of each requirement but also track the changes made to it.

Though requirements form the foundation of all software, most software development teams do not insist on a definite and up-to-date list of requirements. The result is inaccurate, incomplete, and omitted requirements, which leads to project failures and project overruns. Therefore, it is necessary that companies and ...
... organizations put in place an effective requirements management process. The following are the fundamental aspects of requirements management process.

Gathering requirements from users, customers and other stakeholders
Communicating effectively each requirement to the members of the team
Determining the importance of each requirement and prioritizing the different requirements based on its importance
Managing changes to requirements throughout the project lifecycle

To implement an effective requirements management process, enterprises need the right requirements management tools. According to Gartner Group, "Requirements management can be simplified if initial requirements definitions are captured in a database-based tool to enable collaborative review... traceability and versioning/change control". The following are the three important aspects that need to be kept in mind when selecting requirements management tools.

Place Needs ahead of Features
Most enterprises make the mistake of procuring tools with the maximum features. Instead, their priority must be of purchasing tools having features that they actually need. Due to this attitude, enterprises find themselves surrounded by highly complex and equally expensive tools that are of no use other than becoming shelfware.

User Friendly
When selecting requirements management software, make sure that it is easy to use. Otherwise, however powerful the software might be, thanks to its complexity the software development team would think twice before using it.

Easily Customizable
Invest in easily customizable tools so that the development team can manage requirements the way they want rather than allow the tools to dictate. Following a specific methodology would be difficult for the development team to cope with in the long.

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