Project Plan Inception



Project Plan Inception

Section 1: Project Introduction

Introduction

developed by a leadership team. The team identifies business strategies and goals to meet business needs arising from competitive, regulatory, operational, and other business pressures. The leadership team then assembles a project team to accomplish the strategy or goal. This guide provides an overview of Business Requirements, as well as recommendations and techniques for effectively developing such requirements.

The immediate question confronting the project team is How they will accomplish the strategy or goal and How Much will it cost in resources, time, and funding. To answer these questions, the project team must first clearly define What must be accomplished. This can best be accomplished by following the requirements definition process as described in this guideline. Business requirements provide answers about what must be accomplished for the project to be considered a success. The following are some of the typical questions that must be answered:

What business functions are to be performed?

What information is required?

What results are expected?

At what locations?

For whom?

How often?

Business requirements provide the criteria by which a delivered system is judged to determine the success of the final system. Moreover, well-defined business requirements become the starting point for setting stakeholder expectations, as well as ongoing project communications, status, deliverables, and milestones. Consequently, well-defined requirements are critical for a project team to be effective and essential for a project to be an ultimate success.

The importance of the project team and stakeholder allocating the time and effort to develop good business requirements cannot be overstated. The costs of correcting a problem after the introduction of a new product can be as much as 100 times greater than the cost of solving the problem during the development of requirements and the design of the product. \

Types of Business Requirements

Typically, most projects consist of two types of Business Requirements. Both types represent levels of detail in the requested business functionality: one high-level view and one more detailed view. Both levels are specified at different points during a project to identify What must be accomplished (Kerzner, 2009: 149-151).

Type of Requirement

High-Level Business Requirements

The following are characteristics of High-Level Business Requirements:

Provide little detail, are conceptual in nature, and serve the strategic management and decision-making process.

Stakeholders normally include senior and executive levels of management.

An example of such a requirement for an airline might be “Provide real-time flight crew scheduling and re-routing.”

Detailed Business Requirements

The following are characteristics of Detailed Business Requirements:

Describe how business functions, such as billing and scheduling, are to be performed and the expected results for users.

Provide details and clarity that effectively communicate user needs and expectations.

Are the critical component in the successful development of a solution.

System Requirements

The following are characteristics of System Requirements:

Developed in parallel to Business Requirements.

Answer questions about a solution's technical parameters required to provide the requested business functionality.

The combination of Business and System Requirements provide the information needed for a project team to answer the question of How to provide a solution and How Much the solution will cost.

Levels of Design

The combination of Business and ...