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Requirements Change Management Guideline
Quick Summary
If you're not doing impact evaluation and communication, you're not doing change management. This guideline condenses 20 years of lessons learned to provide a complete overview of change management components, processes, and controls.
What this is
A guideline written by an experienced software development executive describing the importance of and the requirements for implementing comprehensive requirements change management. Building on 20 years of lessons learned, this guideline provides the suggested components, processes, and workflows for a robust change management system. It also argues convincingly the need to include evaluation and communication of the impacts of any change requests.
Why it's useful
Change is inevitable. Knowing how to handle changes and requests for changes is vital to delivering the right product on time. Properly estimating the impact of a requested change is one of the most important jobs of the engineering manager, and communicating that impact in a clear way is vital to the success of the project. It's almost embarrassing to ask for an additional 4 hours of budget for a change, and perhaps that's not always necessary. But the cumulative effect of 50 4-hour changes–that's easier to understand and shows why it's necessary to have a process that includes impact evaluation and documentation.The case illustrations and lessons learned will also be helpful for anyone trying to build a business case for implementing a requirements management system in their organization.
How to use it
To implement change management successfully, three elements must be defined, implemented, and adopted. This guideline provides an overview and practical examples for all three elements:
- A Requirements Management System, for creating and tracking requirement baselines. This can be created in a spreadsheet or in a dedicated requirements management tool.
- A Change Process, with no exceptions or circumvention allowed. A typical software change process is illustrated.
- A Change Tracking System to keep track of it all. Suggested elements and workflow are provided.
Recording Key Project Decisions
If you've ever found yourself or your team wondering what you actually decided about that feature weeks ago (or hours ago!) you need a list of Key Project Decisions. This file provides several different formats for recording key decisions in various contexts, as well as tips for using features in common project management and collaboration tools to maintain this critical piece of project history.
Requirements Walkthrough Checklist
A requirements walkthrough is a focused meeting where requirements documents are reviewed in order to finalize or baseline the requirements before they are handed off to the development team.
Requirements Management Plan
A requirements management plan captures the tools the team will use to record and track requirements, reinforces the importance of traceability, and articulates the project's risk management and change control strategies.
Requirements Measurement Plan
This template is designed to help you think through how you will ensure that the documented requirements meet the expectations of your stakeholders, both in content and in quality.
Software Requirements Capture Guideline
Detailed guidelines from an experienced software development executive intent on capturing all necessary requirements, documenting them thoroughly, and ensuring they are well understood.
Change Control Form
A form for requesting and documenting changes to the project (e.g. adding new features) or to elements within the project (such as changing a major spec of a piece of a system, product, or other deliverable).
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