
Familiarize with the challenges faced in managing project requirements
Understand the course objectives
Get an overview of the agenda of the course
Details to be collected to present a change request
Sources of getting changes
Process for change management
The following steps of the change management cycle are explained in detail with examples:
1. Receive change 2. Study change
3. Decide on the change
4. Implement change
5. Verify change
6. Rework, if any
7. Release change
8. Update change records
Also shared few best practices for documentation, indexing and prioritizing (using DAR)
Understand vertical traceability
Understand horizontal traceability
Establish both for their projects using two sets of examples demonstrated
The best practices of requirements traceability:
1. Use simple spreadsheet to document and demonstrate requirements traceability
2. Use process itself to demonstrate requirements traceability for maintenance projects
3. Who is the owner of requirements traceability? Simple technique
4. Ensuring common requirements are traced across multiple projects (platform projects / projects of a program)
5. Traceability for Agile development
Conduct a 4 step brainstorming session to analyze the causes of frequent changes to requirements
Identify and improve upon the controllable causes by:
a. removing unclear defects in requirements (ask questions and getting clarity from stakeholders)
b. getting more details for implicit requirements (document as checklist or domain handbook)
c. Verifying stakeholder understanding (reverse presentation and mindmap)
d. analyzing requirements for quality (simple, complete, clear, consistent, measurable, within scope)
e. following processes, providing training and avoiding repetitive defects
Agile developed is positioned as the first strategy to solve uncontrollable causes of frequent changes
Overview of Agile with its focus on cultural changes in development of a project is provided
Agile is an umbrella of concepts and the concepts are highlighted
SCRUM - project management cycle is explained
Agile methodology helps to solve may be 40% of uncontrollable causes of frequent changes
Negotiation is used as second strategy to solve some of the uncontrollable causes of frequent changes
Reference for further enhancement of learning and career is provided
Most of the organizations will be starting their requirements journey with managing requirements.
When the number of requirements getting changed is less, then people dependent methods work well for managing them.
With a growing organization and increase in number of requirements, an effective process of managing changes is a must.
Several risks related to change management include but not limited to:
i. team members working on changes that are not in the scope of the project,
ii. Supervisor or project manager not aware of tasks allocated as some change requests directly are sent to the team members from idea owner
iii. Improper impact analysis leading to schedule overruns and quality issues.
The course on Managing project requirements Smartly will enable the student to use best practices in change management.
The agenda of the course includes:
1. Change management cycle: detailed explanation with examples and best practices
2. Requirements traceability: bi-directional and best practices
3. Tackling frequent changes: identify the controllable causes and use techniques to solve them
4. Solving uncontrollable causes of changes: market driven, customer centric, vendor specific, compliance related changes are not in our control. Strategies like Agile and Negotiations are aligned with the solution
** Many of the examples and best practices shown are best representing the maintenance projects, platform projects or projects under big programs.
** References to further career development in terms of certification is also provided.
** Provision is made to share the challenges faced and best practices followed in your projects, that will attract the guidance and feedback from the facilitator