Developing and Implementing a Requirements-Management Plan

Name: Developing and Implementing a Requirements-Management Plan
Author: Jeff Hedrington

Develop a requirements-management plan that will guide all teams through the course of a project.

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 6 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

(inspiring music) Welcome to "Developing and Implementing a Requirements Management Plan". In these lessons, you'll learn about managing project requirements and how doing so fits into overall project management. You'll also discover the importance of forming a requirements management plan. We'll also address creating a requirements management plan and planning for and identifying requirements. Requirements management is a set of activities that help the project team identify, control, and track requirements, as well as any changes that are made to the requirements as the project proceeds. After requirements are identified, each one is assigned a unique identifier and classified by requirement type, such as functional, data storage, user behavior, interface to other systems, or generated output. Requirement traceability tables are used by program team engineering to track the features, source code, dependencies, subsystems, and interfaces that are built from each requirement. Common traceability tables that are used in software engineering include the features traceability table, which shows how requirements relate to customer observable business features and functionality, source traceability table, which identifies the source author of each requirement, dependency traceability table, which indicates relationships among requirements to show requirements that should be tested together, subsystem traceability table, which shows the requirements categorized by a software subsystem to help software engineering and support, and the interface traceability table, which shows requirement relationships to internal and external interfaces to help tie this system or process to other existing systems or processes. These traceability tables are actively maintained by the project team and updated anytime software or requirements are modified. A database system, even a spreadsheet, is invaluable in helping software teams track requirement changes. After the project is completed, the project team transitions all of the deliverables and project artifacts to a support team. It's best for traceability to be maintained in a forward direction from requirement to testing, and in reverse from testing to requirement. If a requirement is to be reviewed or advised, then the business analysts and software engineers would already have the information to trace forward regarding who asked for the requirement, which system it's in, and what business or logic code was written from that requirement. If a software change is made due to a problem with the software itself, then traceability would work backwards from the code to the requirement. The software engineer would know who to work with to help the software engineer understand how to revise the requirement and validate that the solution corrected the defect. Requirement traceability is a best practice that can be considered as an investment by the project team. This will help manage changes in requirements and the impacts of any proposed changes through the project's life cycle. Building traceability during requirements gathering usually saves time for the team during the project's design and development phases. This matrix level of traceability means that if the requirements change, the team will know what code to be changed. The team can also identify the specific test to be updated and rerun to ensure that the code adjustment was done correctly. The ongoing return on investment for the project team's due diligence saves support team's research time. This is because the requirements to be coded for testing requirements traceability are tied together in a searchable database or spreadsheet. This practice can also save testing time. But running a test is only needed based on a change of the requirement or code, instead of testing everything.

Intermediate Provider : Jeff Hedrington 6 Lessons · 24m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

After identifying and documenting all project requirements, the final step in managing project requirements is ensuring all requirements are implemented correctly across every team. A requirements-management plan is integral in this step, as it allows all teams to understand exactly what requirements are expected of them and when they must be enacted.

In these lessons, you’ll learn about managing the project after the requirements are established. You’ll discover how having a requirements-management plan can support every team involved in the project. We’ll address practical strategies for building requirements-traceability tables and requirements-management plans to support change management, stakeholder management, and project management practices. You’ll understand how prioritization, preparing for design, and implementation can support contingency planning. Finally, we will also cover tactical decisions that you as the project manager may need to make to ensure all teams are able to successfully complete a project on-time and under-budget.

What You'll Learn

Define requirements-management best practices for managing a project after requirements are established
Form and implement a requirements-management plan that supports every team involved in the project
Build requirements-traceability tables to support change, stakeholder, and project management practices
Guide stakeholders through the requirements-prioritization process and understand why prioritization is needed
Prepare for design and implementation in ways that support contingency planning
Make tactical project-manager decisions to help teams complete a project on-time and under-budget

Key Takeaways

A requirements-management plan lets all teams understand exactly what requirements are expected of them and when they must be enacted.
After requirements are identified and documented, the final step is ensuring all requirements are implemented correctly across every team.
Requirements-traceability tables and requirements-management plans support change management, stakeholder management, and project management practices.
Prioritization, preparing for design, and implementation can support contingency planning.
Project managers may need to make tactical decisions to ensure all teams successfully complete a project on-time and under-budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

The course covers managing the project after requirements are established, including how a requirements-management plan supports every team, building requirements-traceability tables and requirements-management plans for change, stakeholder, and project management, and how prioritization, preparing for design, and implementation support contingency planning.

Who is this course for?

It addresses tactical decisions that you as the project manager may need to make to ensure all teams are able to successfully complete a project on-time and under-budget, making it relevant to project managers responsible for implementing requirements across teams.

What skills will I gain from this course?

The course builds skills in Project Implementation, Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Requirements Engineering, Requirements Elicitation, and Requirements Management.

What topics or lessons are included?

Lessons include Project Requirements and Requirements Management, Forming a Requirements-Management Plan, Identifying Requirements, Implementing the Plan, Managing the Plan, and a Test Your Knowledge section.

Why is requirements prioritization addressed in this course?

The course teaches the processes to guide stakeholders on requirements prioritization and helps you understand the need for requirements prioritization.

Professional Certifications and Continuing Education Units (CEUs)

Project Management Institute (PMI®)

Professional Development Units (PDUs): 0.5

Certification Program Categories:

Ways of WorkingPower SkillsBusiness Acumen

KnowledgeCity has been reviewed and approved by the PMI® Authorized Training Partner Program. Users can maintain your PMI credentials by earning PDUs from KnowledgeCity qualified courses in Project Management, Business Management, Leadership and many others.