Seven steps toward regulatory excellence - Step 7 - Requirements Lifecycle Management
By: Simone Bernardi, Anders Ekman, Celeris AB
Bringing it all together
Over the past weeks, we have presented capabilities that incrementally add more sophistication to any requirements management pursuit. From being able to uniquely identify requirements, which is fundamental to any attempt to manage requirements, to sophisticated management of requirement variants. Although one could claim that there is not a single best way of ordering the capabilities hierarchically, one should agree that each capability adds to the sophistication of the requirements management pursuit.
Step 7 – Requirements Lifecycle Management
The final step in this presentation series focusses on managing requirements over time. Although this capability at first might look simple and straightforward, few organizations have adopted a lifecycle perspective when it comes to requirements, and the solution will build on the earlier presented capabilities. A proper solution for requirements lifecycle management will span from the source of requirements, be it a regulatory document or a target market, to detailed product requirements that serve as input to the production of a product that is highly likely to meet the source requirements. Here, proper representations for the various groups of requirements, traceability, and effective management of change, are critical determinants of success.
Requirements offer a bridge from the needs of the requirement source to the product to be built. The initial product development includes the elicitation and detailing of novel requirements. Upon deploying the product to its market, the product enters maintenance. Typically, a product owner, or a system owner, will ensure that identified bugs and change requests are being implemented in a systematic manner. Occasionally, a major change is needed, either due the emergence of a large change within the requirement that calls for the setup and execution of a project or a program. When such a change occurs, the control and revision of the requirement structure, along with the updated of the product will be managed by the project. Upon project completion, the revised requirements along with the updated product will be handed back to the product owner/system owner. Successful requirements lifecycle management includes the efficient handover of the control of the requirements structure between maintenance and project, back and forth over time.With the current focus on agile techniques, task delivery, velocity, etc. tools and techniques are geared on assigning tasks to team members and to track the completion of tasks over time. With SAFe techniques, the team level work is augmented with a program and a portfolio level, which adds governance and oversight. Still, the focus is more on tasks than on artifacts, and the lifecycle management of artifacts is rarely a consideration.We assert that it is possible to combine agile techniques with efficient requirements lifecycle management, and that this brings a significant competitive advantage. To succeed, one needs to properly manage the lifecycle artifacts over time, as well as be able to provide high-velocity project deliveries.The Celeris Compliance Suite (CCS) offers an out of the box requirements lifecycle management for banks and offers a great opportunity to tap into the engineering techniques from industries that have successfully used requirements lifecycle management for decades. In isolation, or in combination with other development tools, you will be well-positioned to combine agile techniques with proper requirements lifecycle management by use of CCS.
Source: Seven steps toward regulatory excellence – Step 7 – Requirements Lifecycle Management | LinkedIn
