UPEDU - Introduction to Requirements

Introduction to Requirements

The purpose of the Requirements discipline is:

To establish and maintain agreement with the customers and other stakeholders on what the system should do.
To provide system developers with a better understanding of the system requirements.
To define the boundaries of (delimit) the system.
To provide a basis for planning the technical contents of iterations.
To provide a basis for estimating cost and time to develop the system.
To define a user-interface for the system, focusing on the needs and goals of the users.

The Requirements discipline is related to other process disciplines.

The Analysis and Design discipline gets its primary input (the Use-case Model and the Glossary) from Requirements. Flaws in the use-case model can be discovered during Analysis and Design; Change requests are then generated, and applied to the use-case model.
The Test discipline validates the system against (amongst other things) the Use-Case Model. Use Cases and Supplementary Specifications provide input on requirements used in the definition of the evaluation mission, and in the subsequent test and evaluation activities.
The Configuration and Change Management discipline provides the change control mechanism for requirements. The mechanism for proposing a change is to submit a Change Request, which is reviewed by the Change Control Board.
The Project Management discipline plans the project and each iteration (described in an Iteration Plan). The use-case model and Requirements Management Plan are important inputs to the iteration planning activities.