How do you balance the need for flexibility and stability in requirements management?

Identifying stakeholders is vital in the creation of a valuable requirements document that can respond to changing customer changes. There are some basic understanding to help identify these stakeholders. 1. Who is impacted by this project (everyone that is - no matter how highly or lowly placed) 2. Who will benefit from the project 3. Who is sponsoring the project 4. Who is the end user 5. Who is the operational owner 6. Quality and data owner 7. Processes and more Understanding this as a hollistic view will help ensure Then the games can begin

Engaging stakeholders in the prioritization is very important as well. Too often, stakeholders say everything is important and refuse to determine what should be done first. If they aren't used to making that decision, there will likely come a time where the decision is made for them. For example, budget cuts may trim the remaining backlog, regardless of whether items are truly important. Those items might have been completed if properly prioritized. Or an outside influence, like a government agency or other oversight organization, causes extra work to be moved ahead of the existing backlog. The project might have been close to getting that special feature that should have been completed if properly prioritized. But now it's delayed.

I suggest focusing on the most critical requirements and documenting them clearly and concisely to balance the need for flexibility and stability in requirements management. This approach allows for responsiveness to changing stakeholder needs while maintaining stability in the core requirements. For example, in a software development project, we prioritized critical features and documented them in a flexible way, allowing us to deliver a product that met stakeholder expectations while accommodating future changes.

Manage the data It's crucial to document the data that's needed, where it goes, who needs it, who owns it, level of privacy needed, and a clear description of what each element represents. As you gather requirements, track where the data is used and how it moves between pieces of the processes. Don't bother trying to assign the type or size of the data (eg. # of decimal places), that will come later. This will avoid duplication and ensure it can be used for a potential data lake or other usage.