COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
Requirement
A requirement is basically the need of a client. Requirements can be mapped to different functionalities of the system or end product. Throughout SDLC requirement will take different forms. Requirement can be a usable description of a need.
A requirement can simply be a statement by the stakeholder regarding what they believe they need in order to achieve a solution to a particular business problem they are facing. It is the business analyst’s role to define, classify, evaluate, analyse, validate, and prioritize those requirements further. Formulating the requirements is one of the most important aspects of business analysis which will ultimately enable us to provide the stakeholders with the desired solution
Most of the requirements are identified at the initial stage of project, but additional requirements will always add up in further stages of the project. In order to manage the requirements efficiently it is important to classify the requirements into specific categories.
There are totally 4 types of requirements classification, including:
- Business Requirement
- Stakeholder Requirement
- Solution Requirement
- Functional Requirement
- Non-Functional Requirement
- Transition Requirement
- Business Requirement
A business requirement is a high-level statement of goals, objectives of business users. It can be used to describe the change needed by the organization as a whole. This can be captured during the enterprise analysis. This applies to the enterprise as a whole rather than specific groups.
Example: We would like to have a customer complaint register portal so that we can offer better customer service and improve customer satisfaction. Business requirement can include vision for the project, that is the objectives of the people who have to sponsor the solution development. These will be always based on the business perspectives.
- Stakeholder Requirement
Stakeholder requirements are stakeholder specific or individualistic. This can act as a bridge between business and solution requirement. These are more detailed when compared to business requirements. It can include what the stakeholder wants to do with the system
Example: We would like to have facility to monitor the resolution time for each customer complaint on daily basis to improve the service
- Solution Requirement
It describes the competency and characteristics of a solution that will meet the stakeholder and business requirements. This will be used by development team to build the solution. It can be either a process of a system solution. This should line up with the business and stakeholder requirements
It is classified into two categories
3.1 Functional Requirements
Functional requirement specifies the abilities of system. That includes the features the system needs to provide to its users. This can be described based on what inputs are given to the system, what all operations are performed and what is the expected outcome of it. Functional requirement specifies what the system or software should do. Functional requirement is user specific.
Example: Registration for a user, making an online purchase
3.2 Non-Functional Requirement
These are related to the behaviour and environmental conditions of the system. It includes scalability, security, performance, flexibility, reusability, reliability and maintenance. These can be basically the constraints with respect to the quality. Non functional requirement specifies how the system should perform. Non functional requirements are described by the technical team like solution architect.
Example: The web page should load in 3 seconds
- Transition Requirement
It describes the abilities that the solution must have in order to ease the transition from the current state to the future state of enterprise. These include data migration, end user training etc. Transition requirements are temporary, they will be in place only for a certain period of time.
Example: Historical data should be migrated to the new system from legacy system
