We now have linked our scope through to the various levels of requirements. We are then able to prioritize the delivery of the various project obligations.  The prioritization may be based, for example upon:

• Technical need
• Customer need
• Regulatory requirements
• Complexity and Risk

Technical needs are the dependencies to getting the product features working, for example our operating system must be developed before the expected features.

Customer needs would be the priority a specific feature with some measure of performance.  This would likely be the most desirable attribute (most saleable) of the product or the function with the highest profit margin or the most customers needs met.

An example of the regulatory requirement would be the development of an instrument cluster, we would prioritize the speedometer and other required instrumentation to allow the systems integration or vehicle testing to be started. 

We may have some features or functions that have considerable uncertainty involved. Perhaps we need as much field exposure or field feedback to suitably create or adjust the product performance. We may prioritize these more complicated or uncertain aspects to the start of the project giving us time to adjust the system or subsystem design.  Perhaps we are unsure about or models or other simulation activity we have performed and would like confirmation.

These are just a few examples of how we may prioritize the requirements. Each project team will prioritize based upon the constraints put upon the team. In any event, the requirements development and prioritization are part of the building of our release and test plans.