Control deviation risks between customer expectations and your deliverables

Requirements traceability matrix as generated by Qinaps
Gain your customer’s trust and be confident of delivering what is required. Identify and clarify requirements in contract documents. Continuously drive the fulfillment of requirements. Keep an oversight at all times.

Challenges with Requirements Management

An expectation on some object

A requirement is a statement expressing a property on some object.

A requirement is a phrase like “Total vehicle mass is less than 1000kg” or “Controller repairability is high” or “Machine can drill 20mm diameter holes in concrete”.

Requirement Management is all about links

Requirements are given by customers, laws, norms, or business goals. So one needs to drive and monitor their impact on deliveries.

Only when we control the links from requirements to deliveries can we stand clear on our feet and assert “Job done!“.

 

Qinaps generates proposals that are compliant with you standard set of terms and presentation material.
Requirements Management with Qinaps : Requirements coming from customer or from rules are flown down and tracked within every document produced.

It's all about links

The challenge with requirements management is to stay aware of every connection to deliverables:

  • Where is it dealt with?
  • Have we considered all of them?
  • What if a requirement changes?
  • Are they compatible to one another?
  • What if we have deliverables not connected with a requirement?

Requirements are naturally ambiguous

Persons asking questions. Image from freepik.com
Persons asking questions. Image from freepik.com

Removing ambiguity is best when done early

Machine can drill 20mm diameter holes in concrete” is ambiguous: through which concrete?  how fast?  Is drilling  10 mm deep in 10 minutes acceptable?

As early as possible, requirements must be thoroughly clarified with customer to remove any possible ambiguity.  If ambiguity is resolved later on, it could constitute an expensive change event on requirements.

Bridging customer's world with ours

Customer requirements are spelled out using their domain references.  On the other hand, deliveries are built using another set of domain references.

For instance, is customer is asking for “bright red“, we may translate into “Pantone18-1664 Fiery Red“.

 

Flowing down requirements

Refine requirements until actionable and verifiable

After ambiguities are settled (for now!), requirements are turned into more and more specific statements.

Iterations stop when requirements are granular enough to be:

  • a complete specification for a delivery characteristic,
  • verifiable by test, inspection or analysis.

Maintain a network of refinements

Successive requirements form a network flowing customer requirements into deliverable items.  Such network is the central tool for demonstrating traceability. And it’s also central to answer questions such as “have all requirements been considered?”, “do we have stuff that is not linked to any requirement?”.

 

Flowing up satisfaction

Two persons assembling parts to deliver a pyramid-like delivery. Designed by slidesgo / Freepik.
Two persons assembling parts to deliver a pyramid-like delivery. Designed by slidesgo / Freepik.

Resolve requirements

Someone has to decide when a requirement is resolved.  Typically, proof of resolution would be contained in a document.  This could be an affirmation from a designer, or the result of a test, or a statement that requirement is abandoned.

Evaluate overall satisfaction

If initial requirements are refined from the top down, satisfaction is computed from the bottom up.  Fine-grain requirements are asserted as satisfied or not.  Then satisfaction is aggregated as a percentage measure all the way up to the initial requirements.

See it in action with Qinaps

Connect requirements to deliveries

Requirements Management with Qinaps : Network showing requirements dependencies alongside text blocks from delivery documents.

After a customer Request for Proposal has been uploaded into Qinaps, requirements are highlighted inside the original text.

Individual text blocks are created for each requirement.

A response document is created with so-called “delivery blocks”.

Delivery and Requirement Blocks are connected through logical dependencies.

Build automated summaries

Requirements Management with Qinaps : Summary table showing requirements assignments and satisfaction levels.

Qinaps knows how to combine logical dependencies between Requirement Blocks and Delivery Blocks.

The same Blocks can be shown in many different representations and layout with Qinaps.

There is no need to juggle with another spreadsheet or database.  Everything is here at your finger tips.  Always up to date.