A certified Business Analyst (BA) has successfully passed an International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA.org) IIBA® certification exam to demonstrate their fundamental understanding of The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge Guide (BABOK® Guide)’s six knowledge areas, including Requirement Life Cycle Management.
IIBA’s BABOK Guide provides a global standard for the practice of Business Analysis organized into six knowledge areas:
Regardless of your formal role title, if you perform business analysis work, you should be at least familiar with Requirements Lifecycle Management.
The IIBA describes the Risk Lifecycle Management knowledge area as “the tasks that business analysts perform to manage and maintain requirements and design information from inception to retirement.” Within this knowledge area, the BA conducts tasks that:
Although this knowledge area is called requirements life cycle management, it also includes the management and maintenance of designs as well.
IIBA notes that life cycle refers not to a process but rather “the existence of various phases or states that requirements pass through as part of any change.”
To prepare for the IIBA certification exams in business analysis, it is important to understand what is meant when you are asked about “requirements life cycle management BABOK.”
The five tasks in Requirements Lifecycle Management include the work needed to trace, maintain, prioritize, and approve project requirements and designs. Additionally, RLCM encompasses requirement change assessment.
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IIBA states that the Requirements Management Lifecycle’s purpose is “to ensure that business, stakeholder, and solution requirements and designs are aligned to one another and that the solution implements them.”
RLCM brings value throughout a project because not only does it safeguard documentation to be available for future use, but it also provides a means for work to be measured against approved requirements.
RLCM is a much-needed control mechanism that benefits all projects. Requirements should be monitored so that the delivered solution aligns with requirements. IIBA states that Requirements Lifecycle Management occurs throughout the project and is triggered by identifying a business need, represented as a requirement, continues through solution development and ends when the solution and its requirements are retired.
For both Waterfall and Agile environments, the BA begins requirements work before the project begins by eliciting and documenting the business need (problem or opportunity) and the business requirements (business goals and objectives) during strategy analysis, which may be incorporated into the project scope, a business case, and a project management plan). Requirement management continues throughout the project and into the life of the solution after development, thus providing value at each step.
Requirement documentation and timing are directly impacted by the project methodology in use. Waterfall (traditional, predictive) states that all requirements are identified at the start and can only change through a formal change request process, while in Agile (adaptive) environments, requirements may be identified at anytime throughout the project.
RLCM traces the elicited requirements to ensure they are aligned with each other.
From the IIBA description of this RLCM task, the BA “analyzes and maintains the relationships between requirements, designs, solution components, and other work products for impact analysis, coverage, and allocation.”
Requirements may be traced to other requirements, solution or solution components, models, business rules, designs, test cases, and other work products.
Designs may be traced to other requirements, solution or solution components, and other work products.
Outputs include Requirements (traced) and Designs (traced).
Maintain requirements describes the work needed to ensure that requirements continue to be accurate and consistent not only throughout the effort, but as they are reused within future initiatives
IIBA describes maintain requirements taks as “an ongoing need must be maintained to ensure
that it remains valid over time”.
Requirements and designs should…
Outputs include Requirements (maintained) and Designs (maintained).
Requirements may conflict with one another or have different levels of impact. Prioritization is conducted because some requirements, when implemented into the solution or solution component, will provide greater benefit than others. Requirement prioritization feeds into project prioritization.
From the IIBA description of this RLCM task, the BA “assesses the value, urgency, and risks associated with particular requirements and designs to ensure that analysis and/or delivery work is focused on the most important ones at any given time.”
Outputs include Requirements (prioritized) and Designs (prioritized).
Our business environment does not stand still, and while we are in the midst of working on a change intiative or project, requirements may have to change to stay aligned with new business shifts, a change in customer needs, new or changd regulations, etc. s. Thus, any change to requirements must be assessed to determine the impacts and implications of those proposed requirements have on the project or solution
From the IIBA description of this RLM task, the BA “evaluates new and changing stakeholder requirements to determine if they need to be acted on within the scope of a change.”
The impact of the change may be assessed by
Outputs include Requirements Change Assessment and Designs Change Assessment.
Requirements are to be acted upon once they are fully approved.
From the IIBA description of this RLM task, the BA “works with stakeholders involved in the governance process to reach approval and agreement on requirements and designs.”
Outputs include Requirements (approved) and Designs (approved).
For each task of this knowledge area, the outputs include a form of Requirements and Designs. Requirements and designs must be managed and maintained across the life cycle. The BA may keep requirements and design documentation for future projects or change initiatives.
The Requirements Life Cycle work will look different in a Waterfall environment compared to an Agile one, but each of the tasks in RCLM will apply to either approach. . This effort is ongoing, and is often done iteratively and concurrently with other business analysis activities throughout the change intiative that starts the minute you start working with stakeholders to determine or understand their problem or opportunity all the way through the project and to retirement of the solution.
What you do not see here is the term “Requirements Gathering, ” which is deliberate. There is no garden of requirements from which you can pick or gather them. You can only get requirements from purposeful conversations and knowledge sharing with stakeholders and experts. You elicit requirements, but you cannot “gather” them. (I like this 😊)
Use these tips throughout your Requirements Life Cycle Management work to better ensure your success:
Business analysis work brings value that is seen within the project and beyond when it is performed effectively and consistently.
Effective Requirements Life Cycle Management has the potential to bring value throughout a project and beyond. IIBA’s BABOK® Guide describes RLCM as the tasks performed by the BA to manage and maintain requirement before, during and after the project to ensure consistent alignment of business needs, business requirements, stakeholder requirements, solution requirements , and designs.
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