You need not been so technically skilled to be able to see how many project fail due to requirements. We provide a brief list of the failings below: Requirements control Insufficient time Did not include the sponsor or customer Late delivery of requirements Requirements traceability We will not write any more on requirements control that […]
The initial product requirements provide the product baseline. Our project planning will be focused upon delivering meeting these requirements. In a phased development process, we will prioritize the requirements (shown earlier) and deliver iterations. This staged delivery allows us to gain additional insight into the product. We may learn things that necessitate changes to the […]
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 […]
Our configuration management is borne out of our requirements. In our earlier blog post, we discussed how the project scope must be traceable to the requirements. In the case we present below, the project scope is a particular function or need to be met, for example a new feature or function for an automobile. We […]
So how do we ensure we get meaningful requirements? We have a number of ways to understand our objective and learning about the Interviews customer clinics Simulation Digital mock ups Prototype physical mock ups Instrumentation Other information gathering (standards, regulations, etc.) We start with interviews of customers, stakeholders and project sponsors. Interviews also include customer […]
Requirements are fundamental to project success as the scope definition. Additionally, there are dependencies that impact the ability to produce suitable requirements. A few of those things are: Well defined scope of the work Sponsor and customer involvement Capability of the requirements authors Prioritized functions or abilities The needs or objectives of the customers or […]
We have been contemplating the ways we have seen employees respond to the consequences of a decision and the imminent resulting risk. We have noted these responses and know that there are at least two categories of response, Road Sign or Ambulance. Road sign people focus on moving the organization to a better place by […]
Consider a rather large project that like so many projects had some difficulties. The project team had a major component (subsystem) delivered from a supplier. The supplier has one set of processes and the customer organization another. This supplier delivers multiple versions of this major subsystem. The customer integrates this subsystem into the larger system […]
People in education often like to implement “programs.” In fact, we call this syndrome “program-itis” because it leads to inflammation of the budget. As with many corporation, we see people who want to improve a situation decide to follow “best practices” without verifying that these are, in fact, best practices. They can only be best […]
We have been on a bit a tear (or rant) about FMEAs. We suggest the FMEA documentation is part of the core of a design process. The ultimate approach we have seen is that of Michael Anleitner (The Power of Deduction: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for Design, Quality Press, 2010), which uses functional analysis […]