Manage project requirements challenges

- Managing requirements can make or break a project. While the details and the terminology vary from one industry to another, the high level challenges are always the same. The key to effective requirements management is answering four questions. We need to ask them at the beginning of a project and we need to continue asking them until the project is completely finished, just in case things change. First, who are our stakeholders? If you're not sure whether someone is a stakeholder, then just ask yourself, will it matter if this person isn't happy with the final result of the project? If the answer is yes, then they're a stakeholder. Once we've identified our stakeholders, the next question is, what exactly do they want or need? These are your requirements. We've got to get our stakeholders to explain their problems and expectations as clearly as possible and we need to document them properly. The third question we need to ask is how important is each requirement? We probably won't be able to do everything that all of our stakeholders want so it can be a big help if they can tell us what's important to them and what things are optional but nice to have. And the fourth question we need to ask is how will we deal with conflicts, changes, surprises and miscommunications? Because as the project gets going, issues are going to come up. In order to make sure that we're addressing all four of those challenges, I use a 10 step process for requirements management and in this course, we'll walk through each of those steps. To get started, you can download the workbook from the course files and look at the tab named Requirements Checklist. Anytime we're working on a project, our team's job is to deliver something that works, something that satisfies our customers and meets the needs of our business. And we need to have a process to do that because our team success depends on how well we manage our project requirements.