"When you wish upon a ....."

Requirement. Such a simple word, but one of the major causes of project stress. All projects have requirements. IT projects, houses, ships, marketing campaigns all have functionalrequirements that must be fulfilled. Yet on may projects the requirements are not fully documented or even missed. On other projects there are two many or too complicated requirements for the time, resources, or money available. How does this happen?

 

Project issues due to the requirements arise because important aspects of requirements gathering were not done. These aspects include:

·Understanding the current processes being used

·Making sure that each requirement is understood and agreed to

·Making sure each requirement is testable

·Associating a cost with each requirement

·Having a business owner for each requirement

·Tying each requirement back to a scope statement or goal

·Eliminating "wish list" requirements

On any project, the requirements to be delivered should be only those that are truly needed. There really are no nice to have requirements