Looking for suggestion to track many, diverse requirements throughout life of project?
Anonymous
I have a complex waterfall project with many different requirements which need to be met throughout the life of the project. I had considered developing a requirements traceability matrix (RTM) to track and monitor all requirements (frequency, assignee, etc) so nothing is missed, but the RTMs seem geared more toward software/hardware development. Anyone have a suggestion of what has worked well for them to keep track of many requirements? Saving Changes...
My advise to have a weekly Project Status report to include following :
1- Design Activities Breakdown
2-Engineering Activities Breakdown
3-Site Activities Breakdown
4- WBS status table
5-Invoicing Status
6-Area of Concern
7-Project Contractual Milestone Tracking
You need to meet with your team in a weekly basis ; and update this report ; create MOM with actions. Saving Changes...
In my experience, an RTM is more important in testing, to make sure that all testable requirements are covered by a test case. At a high level, it's basically a way to map two different tables of data together, so I don't see why you couldn't ALSO map project deliverables (or tasks) and requirements. You'd want to add a field to the RTM for either the task ID or WBS # of the associated deliverable/task. If you were to add a custom field for the requirement ID to your project schedule, you could probably report on progress of each requirement as the associated deliverable/task was updated. I only bring this up because now I'm thinking about trying it on an upcoming project.
I generally try to structure project schedules and requirements around deliverables, so it won't be a big stretch to try this on one of my smaller upcoming projects. Saving Changes...
Peter RapinSubject Matter Expect; Project Delivery| Independent ConsultantOntario, Canada
1) identify each requirement
2) associate a deliverable with each requirement
3) develop a work breakdown structure for each deliverable
4) break out tasks for each WBS
5) set constraints for each task (effort, resources)
6) integrate across the entire project
6) assign tasks
7) establish performance measurement and monitoring
Most project management software will enable you to do this - just be creative. Saving Changes...