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and have gotten all the major stakeholders and the sponsor to sign the scope

statement, you’re well on your way to a successful project outcome. Taking the
time to create a well-documented scope statement will also help in establishing a
solid basis for future change management decisions.

Documenting the Requirements

You may recall from Chapter 3 that requirements describe the characteristics of the

goals or deliverables that must be met in order to satisfy the needs of the project.
Requirements might also describe results or outcomes that must be produced in order
to satisfy a contract, specification, standard, or other project document. Requirements
quantify and prioritize the wants, needs, and expectations of the project sponsor and
stakeholders.

Requirements definition can be part of the scope statement, or it can be an
independent document, depending on the size and complexity of the project. In my

experience, the scope statement works fine to document the requirements for small
projects.

You will take a closer look at requirements next.

Requirement Categories

Requirements fall into several categories. Having a good understanding of the
differences in requirements can help you when writing a requirements document. Your
stakeholders won’t know the difference and will mix business requirements with

functional and nonfunctional requirements when discussing their expectations. On
larger projects it helps to categorize the requirements so when you’re constructing the
work breakdown structure and later assigning resources, they will already be
somewhat organized.

Business Requirements

An organization’s business requirements are the big-picture results of fulfilling a
project and how they satisfy business goals, strategy, and perspective. Business results

can be anything from a planned increase in revenue to a decrease in overall spending
to increased market awareness and more.

When gathering requirements, your focus should be on the “what,” not on
the “how.” Stakeholders are passionate about their needs and will likely have a list
of ideas on “how” to solve the problem and implement the project. You want to
drive them to the “what” and to answer the question, “What problem are we trying

to solve?”

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