From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Requirement types

From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Requirement types

“

- Requirements come in all shapes and forms, but don't let that confuse you. In a nutshell, requirements are what we need to do, they're what we need to do to satisfy the customer. But what the customer puts in their list of requirements isn't necessarily what we'll eventually do. It's a wish list that gives us a direction, and depending on where you work, or who the client is, these requirements come to us in different formats. It's our job to interpret that list, and then determine the most appropriate way to fulfill the customer's needs. So let's review the different types of requirements. There are six major categories. First, the business requirements. They represent the higher level needs of the organization. Usually business requirements are identified through the needs assessment process, as either issues or opportunities. They're the reason why the project was selected and justified in the first place. The stakeholder requirements describe the needs of individual stakeholders, or groups of stakeholders. These requirements could come from within the organization, internally, or from customers, suppliers, partners, or other external organizations. Solution requirements describe the features, functions, and characteristics of the result. By result, I mean this is what the customer wants at the end of our work. Solution requirements have two subcategories, functional and nonfunctional requirements. Functional requirements describe what the user will be able to do, or what they'll receive when we're done. So this could be something like an online shopping site being able to process orders or returns. This type of requirement is just a high level example of the features to be included. Nonfunctional requirements on the other hand, describe environment, or quality of service conditions. These can also include technology requirements. An example might be the security requirements for your online store's credit card processing. Another category, transition requirements. These include the activities who help transition from the current state to the desired future state. These include training, documentation, and possibly conversion and implementation requirements. Now the next set of requirements are interesting because these are the responsibilities of the project manager, not the business analyst, but we still need to know them to have a full picture of the process. I'm talking about project requirements. They're often specified by either agreements or internal procedures. They include processes and deliverables to ensure that the project is completed on time. These may include management reviews, status updates, and performance reports. The last set of requirements identify the quality levels required. They're the responsibility of either a quality analyst or a group, like quality assurance. These include the conditions or capability used to assess conformance to the requirements. Regardless of the type of requirement, it's important to define how requirements will be managed and tracked. To do this, you use the requirements management plan, and the traceability matrix, but don't worry about that, we'll address those in another video. What's important is managing and understanding requirements, because this helps you control the scope. Once you finalize your requirements and scope boundaries, stick to them. Requirements start out as an unreprioritized wishlist, so it's important to be clear about exactly which ones have been selected. That way you're more likely to provide the greatest value.

Contents