Defining requirements

What is requirements definition?  

Identifying, capturing, clarifying, and documenting the needs and expectations of stakeholders in relation to the development and delivery of a product or service. 

In the context of local government transformation, requirements definition is most often carried out when there is a need to develop, or change software, or to deliver use cases that enable data insights.  

A well-defined set of requirements is an essential foundation in the development of solutions that meet stakeholder expectations.  

Knowledge  

• Contextual awareness.  
• How to implement and / or follow effective governance.  
• Understanding of different requirement capture methods, techniques, templates, and tools.  
• Understanding of different requirement types including functional and non-functional.  
• Understanding of different project delivery approaches, including Agile and waterfall and the different requirements definition approaches needed for each.  
• Understanding of best practice principles and approaches to service design and user research.  
• Technological awareness. 

Skills 

Able to:  

• Think strategically: Ensuring requirements align with the overall strategic objectives of the organisation and consider key constraints.
• Manage stakeholders: Identifying and working with stakeholders to understand their needs, drivers, and priorities.
• Elicit requirements: Gather information from stakeholders including end users and subject matter experts via workshops, surveys, one to one interviews and observation to understand their needs and expectations. 
• Analyse data: To understand current service use and pain points, commonality in need and to enable prioritisation. 
• Document requirements: In sufficient detail to ensure that the expectation is unambiguous, and the success or acceptance criteria is clear.  
• Validate requirements: Collaborating with stakeholders to confirm that what has been documented accurately meets their needs. 
• Work at pace, with attention to detail: To ensure efficient requirements definition. 
• Analyse and prioritise requirements: Ensuring requirements are prioritised in support of business objectives, considering dependencies. 
• Manage conflicting needs: Where requirements overlap or conflict with one another, work with stakeholders to de-conflict requirements, focused on delivering the overall outcome. 
• Manage requirements and ensure traceability: Linking requirements back to related documentation including design and testing documents. 
• Manage change: Work within project or programme governance to ensure changes to requirements are well managed, documented and fully traceable. 
• Communicate and collaborate effectively: With stakeholders at all levels, including technical and non-technical teams. 
• Manage risk: Understand the risks associated with the requirement capture process and any risks created by requirements themselves, ensuring these are reflected in the risk register appropriately. 
• Be emotionally intelligent: Recognise, understand, and use emotional responses effectively in the achievement of outcomes. 

Business analysis – maturity index 

A related business analysis maturity index has been created to enable councils to understand their current maturity and to set, and work towards, a target state. This can be downloaded below.