Artifact: Requirements Attributes |
This artifact describes a repository of project requirements and the information that needs to be captured in order to manage the requirement set and the project as a whole. The information captured can vary from one requirement type to another.
Domains: Requirements
Purpose
To indicate to the analysts the type of information that needs to be captured when a requirement is created or modified.
Relationships
Roles | Responsible: Analyst | Modified By: Analyst
Tasks | Input To: Assess Requirements Consistency | Output From: Assess Requirements Consistency Manage Changing Requirements Organize Requirements
Description
Main Description | A project requirement does not just consist of the description of the requirement. Each requirement needs a set of properties - called attributes - that capture important information about it. And requirements that belong to different categories can have a different set of attributes. All requirements must have a core set of attributes to capture critical information about each requirement. The information that is captured in the attributes can used to generate views and reports, which are used to track and measure progress.
Brief Outline | The following attributes can be stored.
Attributes | Description | Possible Values
Requirement name | Short name of the requirement |
Requirement description | Requirement statements |
Requirement type | Type of requirement | Functional requirement, Usability requirement
Priority | Priority of requirement | Low, Medium, High
Status | Status of requirement | Proposed, Approved, Incorporated, Validated
Difficulty | Difficulty of requirement | Low, Medium, High
Stability | Stability of requirement | Low, Medium, High
Origin | Source of requirement | Customers, Executive Committee
Assigned To | Responsible Person |
Obsolete | Relevance of requirement to the project | True, False
If the requirement is newly added or editted, the status will be "proposed". After all of the project participants commit to the requirement, the status will be changed to "approved". "Incorporated" status is used when the requirement is incorporated into project plans and "Validated" status is assigned when the corresponding function or feature is implemented and validated as completed. Over time, a particular requirement might become irrelevant or out of scope. Rather than deleting an irrelevant requirement, mark it as obsolete.
Illustrations
Examples | Core Requirements Attributes Extended Requirements Attributes
Key Considerations
Requirement attributes help the project team understand, prioritize, manage, track and validate the project requirements.
Tailoring
Representation Options | For a small project, requirements and their attributes can be maintained in a spreadsheet or small database. For a larger project with a large and complex requirement set it's best to use a requirements management tool where custom attributes can be created. Whatever method is chosen, it needs to enable easy reporting, querying and sorting of requirements based on their attributes values so as to facilitate tracking of progress and enable easy identification of issues
More Information
Checklists | Requirements Attributes
Concepts | Requirement Attributes Requirements Traceability Traceability Matrix
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