Who decides a project’s requirements?

Nilesh Raje works as Business Analyst with SYSTIME Computer Systems Ltd. based in Mumbai. He also has his articles published earlier with RQNG, International Institute of Business Analysis, ProjectTimes, Business Analyst Times and ManagementNext magazine. He's been a reader here for a while and has proposed this question;


Who decides a project’s requirements?


I’ll give the bog over to him for the next few days to explore this issue. Jump in and offer comment as we go.


Here is Nilesh.

Every Project Has Requirements

I am sure most of us would agree, “Every Project Has Requirements”. Some requirements are crucial to the product, while others are gold-plated luxuries. Explicitly or implicitly, there is always someone from the project team who performs the role of requirements gathering for every software project. 

Determining the project requirements is vital in developing successful software as they form a baseline between the IT team, the customers and the stakeholders on what features will be delivered in the new system. 

Requirements just don’t come from one source – the development team. Multiple stakeholders are involved as far as requirements are concerned. White paper under consideration would consider the key responsible areas of each of the stakeholders when it comes to determining software project requirements and who own them.  

Requirements Stakeholders 

  

From the above it is evident that software requirements just don’t come from a customer. Requirements come in from all direction which includes: Customers, Business Analyst, Pre Sales Team, Project Manager, Development Team and Testing team. It’s imperative that one identifies at the beginning of the project who takes the ownership for defining the project requirements. If this is not resolved in the early stages of the project then the ownership falls on the development team by default or the requirements would form to be a part of the change request.

Over the next posts we will review the following

• 
  
  
  
  Stakeholders
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Customers
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Analysts
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Sales teams
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Project Managers
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Developers
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Testers

Please follow this series and offer your comments.