THE

PROJECT STARTING POINT: STATEMENT OF

REQUIREMENT

Hello everyone,

The project sponsor’s statement of requirement is an essential point in a
project life cycle. Here’s how you can put one together.

Formalising requirements

Stating a requirement involves transforming a client’s initial idea into a
concrete action plan.

The benefit of this clarification process is that it helps the whole team
understand the idea. It also highlights the advantages and disadvantages
of the project plus the effects it will have on the internal and external
business environment.

The statement of requirement is incorporated into a formal Project
Initiation Document (PID), which then guides the project feasibility and
opportunity study. This document covers a number of different points,
including:
- The context of the project;
- Its objectives;
- Components that already exist: processes, contributors,
structures, products etc. ;
- Expected benefits;
- Constraints;
- Risks.

But don’t fall into the trap of describing a solution rather than the project
sponsor’s requirement!



Tools for stating a requirement

There are two useful tools for formalising a sponsor’s requirement. They
can help you clarify exactly what the project needs to achieve.

The first tool helps you compare a current unsatisfying situation with a
future satisfying situation.
There are several stages in this process:
- Firstly, you need to think about the current issue in terms of how
urgent and important it is. Then you can assign it a priority level;
- Next, you refine your initial analysis by evaluating how serious the
situation is and how it may progress, the possibility it may reoccur
and possible knock-on effects.
- Finally, you define the desired future situation using the SMART
method. In other words, you outline a specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and time-bound objective.

The second tool is called functional analysis. This helps you refine the
statement of requirement by analysing the five different types of
function that a product or service may fulfil.
Of course, there’s the primary function, so the reason why the project
exists in the first place. However, there are always secondary functions,
in other words, additional uses. The esteem function basically refers to
emotional expectations such as recognition. The external constraint
function represents all the ethical, environmental and financial
regulations that need to be observed. Finally, internal constraints relate
to in-house norms in areas such as accounting entries.

Now you have this information, you’ll be able to express your project
sponsor’s requirements in a clear and detailed way.

Thank you for your attention, and see you soon!