REQUIREMENTS: A PRACTICAL, TESTED APPROACH FOR BREAK‐THROUGH SYSTEMS

Abstract Requirements are often described in free‐flowing text, interspersed throughout a document, difficult to locate, qualitative versus quantitative, incomplete, and hence, not a means to base final customer acceptance. But, when requirements are uniquely specified and quantified via standard requirement attributes, requirements can be analyzed and clearly communicated. This allows a process to occur between the customer and project team that concisely defines the requirements and acceptance criteria of the system. The approach sets the basis for systems development ‐ from architectonics through customer acceptance. Prior to implementing a practical approach to requirements definition and analysis, project teams found the requirements process too difficult to implement and did without. Customer ownership was weak. Few breakthrough projects succeeded. As a result, several approaches to requirements definition and analysis were tested. This paper presents a synthesis of the best of these approaches. Projects now move into final phases with well‐defined acceptance criteria and customer ownership. Presented in this paper are guidelines and standards used to develop requirements, requirement attributes, the Ten Commandments of requirements, the process of developing requirements, formats, acceptance criteria, and how requirements feed other project disciplines.