Requirements Management Planning

 Requirements Management Planning

Planning is an essential first stage in the requirements management process. Requirements management is very expensive. For each project, the planning stage establishes the level of requirements management detail that is required. During the requirements management stage, you have to decide on:

1. Requirements identification Each requirement must be uniquely identified so that it can be cross-referenced by other requirements and so that it may be used in traceability assessments.

2. A change management process This is the set of activities that assess the impact and cost of changes. I discuss this process in more detail in the following section.

3. Traceability policies These policies define the relationships between requirements, and between the requirements and the system design that should be recorded and how these records should be maintained.

4. CASE tool support Requirements management involves the processing of large amounts of information about the requirements. Tools that may be used range from specialist requirements management systems to spreadsheets and simple database systems.

There are many relationships among requirements and between the requirements and the system design. There are also links between requirements and the underlying reasons why these requirements were proposed. When changes are proposed, you have to trace the impact of these changes on other requirements and the system design. Traceability is the property of a requirements specification that reflects the ease of finding related requirements.

There are three types of traceability information that may be maintained:

1. Source traceability information links the requirements to the stakeholders who proposed the requirements and to the rationale for these requirements. When a change is proposed, you use this information to find and consult the stakeholders about the change.

2. Requirements traceability information links dependent requirements within the requirements document. You use this information to assess how many requirements are likely to be affected by a proposed change and the extent of consequential requirements changes that may be necessary.

3. Design traceability information links the requirements to the design modules where these requirements are implemented. You use this information to assess the impact of proposed requirements changes on the system design and implementation.

Traceability information is often represented using traceability matrices, which relate requirements to stakeholders, each other or design modules. In a requirements traceability matrix, each requirement is entered in a row and in a column in the

matrix. Where dependencies between different requirements exist, these are recorded in the cell at the row/column intersection.

In a simple traceability matrix that records the dependencies between requirements. A 'D' in the row/column intersection illustrates that the requirement in the row depends on the requirement named in the column; an 'R' means that there is some other, weaker relationship between the requirements. For example, they may define the requirements for parts of the same subsystem.

Traceability matrices may be used when a small number of requirements have to be managed, but they become unwieldy and expensive to maintain for large systems with many requirements. For these systems, you should capture traceability information in a requirements database where each requirement is explicitly linked to related requirements. You can then assess the impact of changes by using the database browsing facilities. Traceability matrices can be generated automatically from the database.

Requirements management needs automated support; the CASE tools for this should be chosen during the planning phase. You need tool support for:

• Requirement storage The requirements should be maintained in a secure, managed data store that is accessible to everyone involved in the requirements engineering process.

• Change management The process of change management is simplified if active tool support is available.

• Traceability management As discussed above, tool-support for traceability allows related requirements to be discovered. Some tools use natural language processing techniques to help you discover possible relationships between the requirements.

For small systems, it may not be necessary to use specialized requirements management tools. The requirements management process may be supported using the facilities available in word processors, spreadsheets, and PC databases. However, for larger systems, more specialized tool support is required. I have included links to information about requirements management tools such as DOORS and  Requisite Pro in the book's web pages.