~ By Duncan Haughey
Requirements gathering is an essential part of any project and project management. Understanding fully what a project will deliver is critical to its success. Requirements gathering sounds like common sense, but surprisingly, it's an area that is given far too little attention.
Many projects start with the barest headline list of requirements, only to find later the customer's needs have not been adequately understood.
One way to avoid this problem is by producing a statement of requirements. This document is a guide to the main requirements of the project. It provides:
The contents of the statement of requirements should be stable or change relatively slowly.
Once you have created your statement of requirements, ensure the customer and all other stakeholders sign-up to it and understand that this, and only this, is being delivered.
Finally, ensure you have cross-referenced the requirements in the statement of requirements with those in the project definition report to ensure there is no mismatch.
To be successful in requirements gathering and to give your project an increased likelihood of success, follow these rules:
Be careful to avoid making these mistakes:
Requirements gathering is about creating a clear, concise and agreed set of customer requirements that allow you to provide what the customer wants.
Download our free Website Requirements Specification
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