Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
Requirements management can mean many things to many people. For some it is about managing scope creep, for others it is all about traceability from definition through implementation. For me, requirements management is the process of:
Validating the requirements identified are aligned with the operational needs of the organization
Proving that both explicit and implicit requirements have been identified
Ensuring the requirements are properly specified, built, tested and implemented
Validating changes in requirements are properly vetted, justified and managed
Wikipedia provides the following definition of Requirements Management: “The purpose of requirements management is to assure the organization documents, verifies and meets the needs and expectations of its customers and internal or external stakeholders. Requirements management begins with the analysis and elicitation of the objectives and constraints of the organization. Requirements management further includes supporting planning for requirements, integrating requirements and the organization for working with them (attributes for requirements), as well as relationships with other information delivering against requirements, and changes for these.”