"You save money by getting requirements right to begin with. Why? Because fixing requirements errors accounts for 70% - 80% of your rework costs." Leffingwell, 1997.
Just how bad can it be?
The worst aspect of requirements errors is that the cost of resolution multiplies with every step along the devlopment lifecycle. An error will progress through analysis into design and then development. For each step along the way, the cost of resolution will grow as more of the team are needed to undertake the necessary rework to resolve it.
If the error is not caught until system test, or worse yet, after deployment into a production environment the cost of fixing the error can be over 100 times the cost of resolution during the requirements stage.
That's a pretty compelling ROI for robust requirements reviews.
If you are in need of an independant review of your software requirements this service will be of interest!
10 Point Requirements Check
We have developed a comprehensive 10 point quality assessment that enables us to provide a detailed report on the quality of the requirements provided.
The assessments are only undertaken by our senior practioners with a depth of skill in business analysis, software requirements and experience across multiple industries and sectors.
What we can check
We can make an objective assessment of the overall quality of the requirements from these perspectives:
- Completeness - each requirement should be a single and complete statement of the requirement.
- Verifiable - each requirement should have a means of verification that can be applied to confirm it's implementation.
- Ambiguity - each requirement should be clearly stated and not open to multiple interpretations.
- Prioritised - each requirement should be prioritised.
- Consistency - requirements should be consistent across the entire specification set.
- Traceability - each requirement should trace to a higher or lower level requirement.
- Maintainability - each requirement should be uniquely identified and modifiable.
We also assess the requirements from the perspective of readability: spelling, grammar, punctuation and the avoidance of words and terms that lead to errors in implementation.
What we can't check
There are some aspects to requirements that are difficult, or impossible, for us to assess:
- The correctness of the requirements - this can only be undertaken by the actual source of the requirement and should be a part of the requirements approval process.
- The neccessity of the requirements - we can identify inferred necessity (e.g. by dependency) however we may not be able toassess the necessity assigned by the source of the requirement.
- The feasibility of the requirements - if the project has constraints that we don't understand e.g. interfaces with third party systems. This aspect is best addressed with the development team.
- Missing requirements - we can't check for it if we didn't know it should have been there!
Can we help?
If you would like to find out more about this service... enquire now!
Need to train your team?
The 10 point check that we apply for clients has been developed into a training workshop that we undertake for business analysis and project teams. If you would like to train your team see the course details here.
