Since BAs primarily work with requirements, managing them is essential to minimize the risk of discrepancies or missing information.
Why Manage Requirements?
Ensures clarity and transparency of requirements.
Provides easy control over changes (change requests).
Saves time. Well-organized and clear requirements save a lot of time when searching and filtering.
Reduces conflicts between requirements.
1. Managing Requirements by Stage
At a basic level, requirement management involves categorizing and organizing requirements in the right place. However, to do this effectively, BAs need tools and skills specific to each stage of the BA workflow:
Elicitation & Analysis: Firstly, BAs need to closely interact with stakeholders to understand project requirements. Simultaneously, they need to categorize and prioritize requirements based on importance, feasibility, and other constraints. At this stage, MoM (Minutes of Meeting), BRD (Business Requirements Document), and URD (User Requirements Document) are useful tools to help BAs manage, categorize, and prioritize requirements.
Documentation: This is the most time-consuming stage for BAs. Requirement management during this phase requires more effort and meticulousness. The files mentioned above will be very helpful as input data. However, when working on detailed documentation, you'll discover new dependencies between User Stories/Use Cases or identify additional functionalities. A Requirement Traceability Document (RTD) is an excellent tool for managing requirements at a more detailed level. Additionally, the RTD helps you effectively track and manage requirement changes.
Confirmation: This stage can also lead to changes as clients verify the solutions/documents you provide. MoM, BRD, URD, or the Requirement Traceability Matrix can all be used in this step, depending on whether you're confirming high-level or detailed requirements.
2. Tips for Effective Requirement Management
To effectively manage requirements, consider these tips:
Categorize requirements by module/feature or department (depending on the project).
Ensure MoM (Minutes of Meeting) are comprehensive and sent to all parties after each meeting to ensure requirement transparency.
For URDs and BRDs, clearly state the name of the stakeholder who provided the requirement (instead of just mentioning the department).
Whether you manage requirements using Use Cases or User Stories, assign a unique code to each UC/US (e.g., for the Customer Management module: CMUC0001/CMUS0001...).
For the Requirement Traceability Matrix, try to fill in all relevant information about related requirements.
Whenever there are updates or changes, maintain a revision history (history log/revision history).
In addition to managing requirements, organize and store document files and references logically. For example, create folder structures for BA, such as: Level 1: [BA team] > Level 2: [References], [Documents], [High-level documents], [Planning]... > Level 3 - [Documents]: [WIP], [Final], [Archived]...
3. Common Risks
Incorrect requirements: This is the most common risk, often caused by inadequate analysis or BAs being hesitant to confirm requirements with clients.
Uncontrolled changes: Often, when there are Change Requests (CRs), people tend to update documents directly instead of updating the tracking file. This can easily lead to losing control of requirements and potentially incomplete impact analysis.
Not maintaining the tracking file: This is another common mistake. During the work process, due to being busy, people might neglect to update the tracking file when encountering related requirements, new requirements, or removed requirements.
Requirement management is an ongoing process. Continuously evaluate and improve your approach to ensure you're delivering the best possible products. Good luck!
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