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Written by Jerry Nicholas in Professional Knowledge
Requirements life cycle management is the knowledge area that describes the
tasks that a business analyst performs to manage and maintain requirements from
initiation right through to final implementation.
During requirements life cycle management, the business analysts employ all six of
the key concepts listed in BABOK. They are responsible for evaluating changes to
requirements and designs and managing requirements so that the stakeholders’ needs
are satisfied.
The BAs trace requirements to the solution components and align the solution with the
need. During this process, they cooperate with interested stakeholders on the
understanding and approval of requirements. The goal is to maintain requirements in a
way that will provide future value and that is only possible through understanding the
organisational context in which these activities take place.
The knowledge area of requirements life cycle management involves five tasks that a
business analyst needs to perform: trace requirements, maintain requirements,
prioritise requirements, asses requirements changes, and approve requirements.
Table of Contents
1. Trace Requirements
2. Maintain Requirements
3. Prioritise Requirements
4. Assess Requirements Changes
5. Approve Requirements
Trace Requirements
Tracing requirements involves analysis and maintaining relationships between
requirements, designs, and solutions which should provide the basis for impact
analysis, allocation, and coverage. The life cycle of every requirement needs to be
identified and recorded in a way that ensures backward and forwards traceability.
Through traceability, the business analyst can ensure that the solution is aligned to the
requirement and manage the scope, timeline, risks, and potential costs.
It’s also helpful for discovering requirement inconsistencies and flaws and provides a
better understanding of the change. Tracing enables the analyst to assess at any given
moment if certain requirements have been addressed or not.
Requirements tracing is based on two key inputs – requirements that can be traced to
other requirements, solutions, and other process components, and designs which can
also be similarly traced. The completely traced requirements and designs are the
expected outputs of this process.
Level of Formality
Relationships
Traceability Repository
The main guidelines and tools used for tracing the requirements are domain knowledge,
information management approach, legal/regulatory information, and requirements
management tools/repository. The techniques that the business analyst will most likely
use are:
Maintain Requirements
Maintaining requirements is necessary for keeping the requirements and designs
accurate and current throughout the cycle. It also enables their reuse if needed.
Maintenance of requirements is crucial for preserving their validity through the process,
especially since it represents a certain organisational need. To maximise the benefits of
maintaining requirements, the business analysis must make sure that the requirements
are consistently represented, approved, and reviewed using standardised procedures,
and easy to access and understand.
Two inputs are key for requirement maintenance – requirements (goals, business
requirements, stakeholder requirements, and transition, and solution requirements) and
designs that are maintained throughout the whole process.
Maintaining Requirements
Maintaining Attributes
Reusing Requirements
While maintaining requirements, the business analysts commonly use information
management approach as a useful guideline or tool. Besides this, there are several
helpful business analysis techniques:
The ranking doesn’t just reflect the relevance of a requirement, but often their place in a
project timeline. As the project moves on, and new changes and needs are introduced,
the prioritisation can also change reflecting this process. The ultimate objective of
requirements prioritisation is securing the maximum value for the stakeholders.
The crucial inputs for requirements prioritisation are requirements that are to be prioritised
(in the form of text, diagrams, or matrices) and designs in similar forms ready for
prioritisation. Prioritising requirements is expected to produce two key outputs; prioritised
requirements ranked according to the highest value and prioritised designs that are also
ranked similarly and ready for further work.
Backlog Management
Business Cases
Decision Analysis
Estimation
Financial Analysis
Interviews
Item Tracking
Prioritisation
Risk Analysis and Management
Workshops
Stakeholders that have significance at this phase of the project are customer, end-user,
implementation subject matter expert, project manager, regulator, and sponsor.
The inputs for requirements change assessments are proposed change, requirements,
and designs. This task should produce outputs of requirements change assessment
containing recommendations on approval, denial or modification, and design change
assessment with similar recommendations.
The three main elements of the task of assessing requirements changes are:
Assessment Formality
Impact Analysis
Impact Resolution
Guidelines and tools the business analysts use while assessing requirements changes
are change strategy, domain knowledge, governance approach, legal/regulatory
information, requirements architecture, and solution scope. The key business techniques
of use here are:
Business Cases
Business Rules Analysis
Decision Analysis
Document Analysis
Estimation
Financial Analysis
Interface Analysis
Interviews
Item Tracking
Risk Analysis and Management
Workshops
The stakeholders that are important for assessing requirements changes are customer,
domain subject matter expert, end-user, operational support, project manager, regulator,
sponsor, and tester.
Approve Requirements
During the approving of the requirements, the business analysts work closely with the
stakeholders with the role in the governance process to approve and agree on certain
requirements and designs. reaching the agreement and obtaining approval is crucial for
the continuation of the business analysis process.
The inputs for requirements approval are verified requirements and designs. The task
should end with the output of approved requirements and designs.
The elements of the requirements approval task are: