Analyzing Requirements
Is this really a requirement?

The objective of this activity is to make sure you have well formed, well written business requirements that everyone has agreed to.

Steps that should be done in the Analyzing Requirements activity are:

1. Writing
2. Classification
3. Prioritization
4. Negotiation

ClearlyPUT’s Requirementing includes a good analyzing requirements activity as part of it’s Requiremenets Management approach.

Writing

During the Gathering Requirements activity you managed to collect a bunch of “raw” requirements. These “raw” requirements must now be re-written as good, well Structured Requirements

A good Business Requirement is defined as a true business need and must be independent of any system. It is composed of four distinct parts: 1) the user; 2) the capability; 3) the object; and 4) the qualifier. It expresses a single business need.

Classification

Requirements can be classified as either functional or non-functional. Functional requirements are capabilities, functions that the solution must perform. Example:

Non-functional requirements are constraints which will limit the solution.

Functional requirements can be further classified into subject domains such as shipping, ordering, billing, etc.

Non-Functional requirements can be further classified into such categories as security, performance, availability, etc.

Prioritization

Analyzing Requirements should also prioritize the requirements based on some meaningful scale. A scale such as the following should be used:

• Mandatory
• Desirable
• Optional

This scale will help determine which requirements can be eliminated if it is decided to reduce functionality due to cost constraints when designing the solution.

For example, it may be desirable to have the customer notified when his order has been sent. During the design it is decided that the cost is too much and that functionality could be dropped. They will continue to respond to queries from the customer on an as needed basis.

A new tax increase that has just been passed is deemed to be mandatory and must be implemented as part of the solution.

Negotiation

During your Requirements Gathering activity you received many different requirements from many different stakeholders. Some of these requirements are contradictory and need to be resolved.

In the Analyzing Requirements activity you must now look for ways to resolve any conflicting requirements. This requires special negotiation techniques. The objective of the negotiation is to determine the overriding requirements which best represents the business needs of the organization.

Summary

Analyzing requirements is one of the most critical activities of the Requirements Management Process. The objective of this activity is to make sure you have well formed, well written business requirements that everyone has agreed to.

Steps that should be done in the Analyzing Requirements activity are:

1. Writing
2. Classification
3. Prioritization
4. Negotiation

Requirementing Steps