Requirements Management: The Hidden Benefit

Requirements-Are-ForeverAs you know, writing detailed requirements is very valuable – both for traditional (waterfall) projects, and for Agile projects. Please check out my previous post for why detailed requirements are beneficial even for Agile projects.

In this blog post, I’d like to highlight one thing that many people miss when it comes to requirements management.

Wondering what it is? Read on for the answer…

Requirements Are Not Only for Today

Detailed requirements created during a project also serve as a repository for requirements.

Such a repository makes future enhancements and change requests way quicker & faster. i.e. To borrow a line from the diamond industry:

Requirements Are Forever!

Keeping Requirements Updated is a Big Part of Good Requirements Management

In addition  to creating detailed requirements, you should also keep your requirements updated for every change, and use a versioning system to track the changes. Tools such as Accompa make it really easy to do this.

In summary:

Creating detailed requirements will not only help you with the current project, but also make future projects quicker & easier.

Are you wondering “Hey Michael, what about Agile which recommends us to shred the index cards at the completion of each sprint?” Well, that is a topic for another day & another post! 😉

Until then, to your success…

Editor’s Note:
Interested in learning how Product Management teams can improve their effectiveness in working with Agile Development teams?  Get our FREE eBook  A Practical Guide: Product Management & Agile Development.

Michael Shrivathsan

I'm your author, Michael Shrivathsan, an expert in requirements management with successful experience at several innovative companies in Silicon Valley, USA over the past two decades. I'm also a USPTO patent recipient. For my day job, I'm the VP of Product Management at Accompa, we make the popular requirements management software.

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