Agile Requirements Management Area

Summary

Requirements are built by business owners and technical members and refined through all the duration of the project.They should be prioritized based on their value and technical risk to maximize the probabilities of success of the project.

Goals

- At all times, a project backlog is maintained with all requirements prioritized by their business values and technical risk. This backlog might have different levels of understanding and approval. The highest priority requirements should have a greater level of detail, understanding and approval.
- The backlog should be easy to maintain and light. The product owner should be able to modify and re-prioritize it at all times.
- All requirements should have a set of acceptance automated tests up to date at all times. If there are changes to the already implemented requirements, the acceptance tests need to be modified to reflect that.

Standard Practices

- A product backlog is created at the beginning of the project and maintained through out it. The main input should come from the product owners, who understand the business needs and the value of the requirements and from the development team, who should advise about the technical risks.
- A common practice is to write the requirements as user stories. A user story is written using the business lingo, it has an actor (someone that will use the system) and it provides some (ideally measurable) business value.
- Acceptance tests should be defined and validated with the product owner and implemented for all stories. These acceptance tests act as an scaffold that assures all requirements are being met at all times and also as a traceability tool.
- An Agile Management Tool is needed in case the project is considerably big and/or geographically distributed. This tool should allow anyone to make modifications on the stories and to reprioritize them.