10 Warning Signs of Weak Requirements Management

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Presenter

Nico KrügerTechnical Solutions Engineer


Here’s What We’ll Cover Today

The SolutionHow do we solve this to

succeed in today’s competitive market?

Why do I need this?Why do we need to

manage requirements in the first place?

Warning Signs10 warning signs that you

need a better solution.

Why do we need to manage requirements?


What is the purpose?

Requirements management is the process of collecting, analyzing, refining, and prioritizing product requirements, and then planning for their delivery.

The purpose of requirements management is to ensure that the organization validates and meets the needs of its customers, as well as external and

internal stakeholders.

Traditional Agile (SCRUM, KANBAN)

• Epics

• User Stories

• Tasks

• Business Requirements

• Functional Requirements

• And more…


Why do we need to structure this better?

For most software products, we know the complexity doubles every 2-3 years.

Complexity



Team Size

As a benchmark, over 40% of teams have at least 25 members and stakeholders.



Distributed Locations

We need to ensure everyone is on the same page — without wasting a ton of time gathering status updates.

DESIGNER DEVELOPER

DESIGNER/DEVELOPER

DESIGNER/DEVELOPER

DESIGNER/DEVELOPER



Change Will Happen

Most teams spend at least 10% of their time just managing changes to requirements — let alone the impact of a change on any other related requirements, tests, or issues.

10 Warning Signs of Weak Requirements Management


The Warning Signs…

Manually Merging Changes

• Manually merged documents.

• Lost comments, updates, changes.

• Incorrect document versions.



Get the Latest Version

• What is the latest version?

• Who has the latest version?

• Is that person out of the office?

• No central location to access the latest approved document.



Document Reviews

• Unable to automate reviews.

• Reviews takes days or even weeks, and status updates seem impossible.

• Tracking reviews and changes since the last document snapshot is a lot of work.



Customer expectations

• Stakeholders complain about product features not matching what customers wanted.

• Loss of confidence in team.

• Loss of revenue due to incomplete or mismatched features.



Bugs Highlight Mismatched Features

• Testers tested incorrect requirement definition.

• Bugs are found by customers that have not been tested as per the requirement.

• Time and money are lost on incorrect work by team members.



Releasing Incorrect Features

• Missing features that the customer actually wanted first.

• Pushing features that are no longer in scope.

• Release dates slipping due to time wasted on incorrect requirements.



Traceability Seems Impossible

• Gave up on traceability due to time required to maintain data.

• Unable to show test coverage.

• Cannot show defects fixed covers tests from requirements implemented.

• Unable to get product into market on time due to time spent manually creating trace matrices.

• Unable to manage the impact of changes.



Collaboration Is Lost

• Unable to track email conversationson requirements.

• Stakeholder comments, questions not recorded against artifacts.

• Key updates stuck in someone's inbox.



Losing Track of Artifacts

• Requirements are more than words. They are a story, image, video, diagram, model, etc.

• Unable to track artifacts that are part of a requirement.

• No relationship between code and requirements completion.



Status Updates Take All Day

• Someone needs to get the latest status report.

• Unable to get the latest status information easily at any time, from anywhere.

• Stakeholders not satisfied the team is making progress and know when things will get done.

What is the right solution?


The Right Solution…

Centralize, Organize, and Customize

• Central repository.

• Access via a browser, Windows, Linux, or Mac client.

• Structure requirements into hierarchy.

• Support Agile, V-Model, Waterfall, or a hybrid process.



Facilitate Collaboration

• Track comments, reviews online.

• Ensure emails and other artifacts are attached.

• Notify users and escalate items automatically.

• Integrate with popular messaging systems like SLACK.



Control Change

• Changes can come from any stakeholder.

• Ability to respond to change.

• Instant impact analysis.

• Track progress towards release.



Provide End-to-End Traceability

• Automate trace matrix generation.

• Understand the impact of change.

• Generate test cases from requirements.

• Conduct coverage analysis.



Automate Workflows

• Customize workflows to match your process flows.

• Provide up-to-date status information.

• Automate approval and review processes.

• Automatic escalation rules.

• Increase team efficiency.



Enforce Regulatory Compliance

• Audit log

• 21 CFR Part 11, Sarbanes-Oxley

• Electronic Signatures

• Full history logging

• Security and permissions

• Manage risks, FMEA’s and more



Implement Security Measures

• Client / Server encryption

• Role-based security to control access

• LDAP / AD Integration



Detailed Reports

• Create customized dashboards and reports.

• Integrate with external reporting tools.

• Import and export data from MS Word.

• Import and export data from MS Excel.

• Online status updates.



Integrate with Other Solutions

• Integrate with your environments.

• Cloud hosted or self hosted options.

• Support popular tools like JIRA, Helix VCS, GIT, SLACK, SVN, Jenkins.

• Utilize LDAP / AD Integration.

• Support multiple database options like MS SQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle.

• Enable your DevOps strategy to succeed.

The right solution will provide visibility, traceability, risk mitigation and quality improvements.

Questions?

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10 Warning Signs of Weak Requirements Management

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Transcript of 10 Warning Signs of Weak Requirements Management