Collecting requirements means finding out what stakeholders want and need, writing them down, and keeping track of them so that goals are met. The best thing about this process is that it helps you figure out what the product and project goals are. This step is only done once or at set times during the job.

The figures that follow illustrate the inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs of this process are as follows:

Collect requirements inputs

• The high-level project description and high-level requirements that will be used to make specific requirements are written down in the project charter.
• The scope management plan explains how the project’s goals and objectives will be set and grown.
• There is information in the requirements management plan about how the project requirements will be gathered, studied, and written down.
• In order to evaluate and adjust to the degree of stakeholder involvement in requirements activities, the stakeholder engagement plan is utilized to understand the communication needs of stakeholders and the degree of stakeholder engagement.
• Assumptions about the product, project, surroundings, stakeholders, and other things that can affect requirements were written down in the assumption log.
• The lessons learned Register is used to keep track of useful methods for gathering requirements, especially for projects that use an iterative or adaptive product development approach.
• Project and product requirements can be in business agreements.
• Enterprise environmental factors such as infrastructure, personnel management, market conditions, and organizational culture are a few examples that may impact the Collect Requirements procedure.
• The Collect Requirements process may be impacted by the following organizational process assets: policies and procedures; a repository of historical information and lessons learned containing data from prior initiatives; and so forth.

Collect requirements tools and techniques

• People or groups with specialized knowledge or training in the Requirements elicitation and analysis should be asked for their advice.
• Brainstorming is a way to come up with and organize many ideas that relate to the requirements of a project or product.
• Interviews are a way to get information from stakeholders by talking to them directly. They can be formal or casual. It is usually done by asking both planned and unplanned questions and writing down the answers.
• Focus groups are made up of stakeholders and subject matter experts who have already been screened to find out what they think about a suggested product, service, or result and how they feel about it.
• Questionnaires and surveys are written lists of questions that are meant to quickly get a lot of information from a lot of people. Questionnaires and/or surveys work best with a wide range of people, when time is of the essence, when people are spread out physically, and when statistical analysis could be useful.
• Benchmarking is the process of comparing current or planned products, processes, and practices to those of similar businesses in order to find the best ways to do things, come up with ways to make things better, and get a way to measure success. When you do benchmarking, you can compare both internal and external groups.
• One type of data analysis that can be used for this is document analysis, but it’s not the only one. Document analysis is the process of looking over and judging any important written information. Document analysis is used to find information that is important to the requirements by looking through existing documentation in this process. A lot of different kinds of documents can be looked at to help find the right standards.
• Some of the ways that decisions can be made in the Collect Requirements process are voting, autocratic decision making, and multicriteria decision analysis.
• Affinity diagrams and mind mapping are two types of data visualization tools that can be used in this process.
• A scope model is shown by the context picture. Context diagrams show the scope of a product by showing a business system (like a process, piece of equipment, computer system, etc.) and how people and other systems (called “actors”) interact with it.
• Making a prototype of the product you want to make before you actually build it is a way to get early feedback on your needs.

Collect requirements outputs

Requirements documentation

It is written down in requirements documents how each requirement meets the project’s business needs. It’s possible for standards to start out vague and get more specific as more information is gathered. Before they are baselined, requirements must be clear (measurable and testable), tracable, full, consistent, and acceptable to the people who matter the most. The requirements document can be as simple as a list of all the requirements sorted by stakeholder and importance, or it can be more complex and include an executive summary, detailed descriptions, and attachments.

Many businesses divide requirements into different types, like business and technical solutions. Business solutions are for meeting the needs of stakeholders, while technical solutions are for putting those needs into action. It’s possible to group requirements into classifications, which lets more refinement and information be added as the requirements are explained in more detail. The following groups are included:

• Business requirements
• Stakeholder requirements.
• Solution requirements
• Transition and readiness requirements
• Project requirements
• Quality requirements

Requirements traceability matrix

In the requirements traceability matrix, there is a grid that shows the relationship between product requirements and the outputs that meet those requirements. By connecting each requirement to the project and business goals, a requirements traceability grid helps make sure that every requirement adds value to the business. It lets you keep track of requirements throughout the whole project, which helps make sure that the requirements that were approved in the requirements documentation are given at the end of the project. Lastly, it gives you a way to handle changes to the product scope.

Some of the things that are looked at when tracing requirements are business needs, opportunities, goals, and objectives; project objectives; project scope and WBS deliverables; product design and development; test strategy and test cases; and high-level requirements to more detailed requirements.

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