A requirement management plan is instrumental in documenting the project plan to ensure all stakeholders and business requirements are captured correctly.
The importance of requirements management encourages companies to ensure they have a project requirement plan in place before software development.
In many cases, the Performance Institute recorded that improper requirement management was one of the leading causes of project failure.
Understand the requirement management process to ensure you can oversee everything throughout the project before it arrives at the development team.
Our benefits at Requiment include a guided process to ensure exceptional requirement management.
Some knowledge about project planning and the management plan will set you up for a start at success.
What Is a Requirements Management Plan?
Requirements management efforts will determine whether a project succeeds, competes in a highly competitive market, and meets the business and stakeholder requirements. Project requirements align with project objectives in a successful requirements management plan document.
Requirement management planning results in a document that outlines the project management plan. It’s also called a scope management plan that lets project stakeholders know what to expect and stakeholders understand every process, step, and particular requirement in a development project.
Why Is a Requirements Management Plan Important?
A project’s requirements management plan is essential for the following reasons:
- You identify all of the project’s stakeholders for the intended software
- Your business can reduce costs with a project budget
- The plan allows you to establish traceability for requirements
- Projects have faster delivery times with higher quality results
- The development team can avoid scope creep
- It’s easier to identify and resolve conflicting requirements
- Your business can better mitigate risks and follow industry standards
- You get detailed product requirements to keep all stakeholders on the same page
- The project team better understands the project’s scope and technical requirements
Requiment Requirements Management Tools
Our online tool, Requiment, created by Pulsion Technologies, a company with 35+ years of experience, will help you with requirement management.
Requiment has numerous demo videos to show you how to use and manage requirements software.
Furthermore, we make output reports and task generation a breeze, while you can update easily any changing requirements in a change request process and create wireframes.
Sign up for a free trial today to learn more about Requiment.
Alternatively, contact our digital strategy consultants at Pulsion to discover the answer to your development project’s requirements management plan.
How to Design a Requirements Management Plan
The requirements management process goes smoothly with a step-by-step guide to document the scope management plan. Follow the steps to document a comprehensive project management plan that aligns with project objectives to meet and deliver successful project deliverables as a project manager.
Read our article about requirements documentation best practices for business analysts to have clear expectations about the coming steps.
Step 1: Define the Project Scope
The project’s scope refers to the management plan that includes documenting project costs, project deliverables, company objectives, tasks, and the life cycle or deadline.
The project’s scope is typically captured under a scope management plan or a project charter or management plan.
Requirements management work follows these guidelines to ensure every step of development and test cases is managed well.
Otherwise, a stakeholder lacks critical information without a well-defined project scope and documented management plan.
Step 2: Identify Stakeholders for the Project
Project requirements originate from stakeholders. So, the next step managers use is to identify and capture all stakeholders affected throughout the project and after software development.
They identify any stakeholder, even those with a single requirement. The requirement management plan will show how project managers identify the relevant people.
Step 3: Elicit Stakeholder Requirements for the Management Plan
A scope management plan will also include details of how managers elicit stakeholder requirements. They also document the requirements elicitation methodologies used in managing the project.
They record whether they use stakeholder interviews, brainstorming sessions, observations, focus groups, prototyping, or requirements-gathering workshops.
Our requirements-gathering template checklist can ensure project managers gather the right data.
Step 4: Define Roles and Responsibilities for the Requirements Management Efforts
A requirement management plan must document the responsibilities and roles of every development team member, business analyst, project manager, and project designer.
The management plan should include responsibilities for each project team member, including actionable efforts they make in creating and managing requirements.
Step 5: Capture Requirements Traceability Matrix Details
How managers establish a traceability matrix in the intended project is another essential part of the management plan to capture details to ensure details are fully understood by stakeholders.
Requirements traceability is a sub-section of the project management plan. The project’s requirements need to show details of how requirements are measured and traced.
Successful requirements management planning includes the ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement in a requirements traceability matrix (RTM).
Step 6: Capture How You Delegate Requirements Management Tasks
Project management also means managers delegate tasks, which is automated with our task-generation tool. However, a requirements management plan must outline how managers delegate tasks.
The process includes capturing the details of how task delegation or generation is managed to ensure the project runs smoothly once development begins. Our task templates simplify the managing process.
Our task planning from requirements-gathering article can help managers improve this process.
Step 7: Determine How to Manage Conflicting Requirements
Conflicting requirements are a part of a project. Project management includes managing opposing requirements from different stakeholders during the documentation process.
A requirements management plan must include details of how project managers identify and work around people having different requirements.
Step 8: Detail How Requirement Prioritisation Is Addressed
Managers or analysts must define how they prioritise requirements to properly manage a project. Projects will suffer from overruns or budget breaks if prioritisation isn’t addressed.
Project managers describe in detail whether the management team will use numerical assignments, the MoSCow method, the analytical hierarchy process, or the Kano Analysis to prioritise requirements.
Furthermore, functional specifications and non-functional requirements must be prioritised in the plan. Functional specifications define tools, functions, and features of the intended software.
Non-functional requirements describe performance, usability, and reliability attributes. Prioritising the requirements throughout the project is essential to how change requests will be managed.
Also, read our article about functional and business requirements explained to know the differences.
Step 9: Document Changing Requirements Management Plan
The implementation of complex projects requires a change management plan. Project managers will describe how they’ll address requirements change requests throughout the project.
Requirements management planning also requires a project manager to outline how they handle changes that influence key elements of requirements management, including:
- Reasons why requirements must change
- How the requirement was, and how it changed
- Who must authorise the requirements change
- How the change request will affect the project
The importance of updating the requirement documentation throughout a project is a good read to understand why change management matters.
Step 10: Defining How Project Stakeholders Remain in the Loop
Project managers know they must include details of how the requirements management plan will be communicated to stakeholders. How will the project manager keep everyone on the same page?
Good requirements project management utilises tools like Requiment to communicate and collaborate with other team members. One example of how this happens is when managers generate reports.
Step 11: Include a Cost Management Plan
A good project management plan includes a cost management plan to help a business determine its budget and guide the development team to cut low-priority requirements.
A requirements management plan without a cost management plan doesn’t encourage successful project management. An analyst will determine the projected costs involved in the project.
However, the managers determine the budget necessary for priority requirements, control cost processes, and deliver progress reports as part of the requirements management plan.
Summing Up the Requirements Management Plan
A requirements management planning process can define the project scope, implement a requirements traceability matrix, and design an elaborate project overview to prevent project failure. It’s an instrumental part of avoiding project delays and project failures in development.
The ideal requirements management plan allows smooth and effortless project management. Learn more about us to determine if we’re your online tool for a successful requirements management plan. Also, sign up for our free trial and watch our demo videos to see how easy project management can be.
Requirements Management Plan Frequently Asked Questions
What Is an Example of a Requirements Management Plan?
An example of a requirements management plan is a project scope plan document you get with a project management plan. It describes how project managers handle multiple essential management steps in requirements gathering and analysis.
What Is a Requirements Management Project Life Cycle?
The requirements management life cycle is a deadline with expected milestones for project managers to create, maintain, evolve, implement, and deliver requirement artifacts.
What Are the 5 Project Management Processes?
The five project management processes in a project management life cycle include:
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Monitoring
- Closure
What Are the Steps of a Comprehensive Requirements Management Plan?
Project managers design and capture the following details to finalise a requirements management plan:
- Define the project scope
- Identify project stakeholders
- Stakeholder requirements elicitation planning and execution
- Define roles and responsibilities for requirements management
- Outline the requirements traceability matrix
- Capture requirements management task delegation
- Determine conflicted requirements management
- Add complete requirements prioritisation modelling
- Add a requirements change management plan
- Define communication and collaboration for stakeholders
- Include a cost management plan