Holistic requirements management considering the degree of requirements' performance

Abstract

The importance and topic of quality thinking have changed considerably over the last decades. Process orientation, continuous improvement and customer requirements have been increasingly focused. Accordingly, quality management occurs in all stages of the life cycle. Thereby customer requirements are the initial point. Subsequently, they have to be implemented to meet customer needs. Quality function deployment (QFD) is an established method for this. However, it only gives reasonable results if the customer requirements have been gathered completely and without loss and distortion of information. During the process of planning and developing complex facilities, this is difficult because of the multitude of different requirements and stakeholders. Furthermore, it has to be considered that stakeholders attach different importance to their expressed and latently existing requirements. For implementing requirements and consequently customer satisfaction, it is essential to regard the requirements' weightings also. Considering these aspects, a holistic 10-dimensional model has been created. It allows structuring of requirements for further use and realisation within QFD and evaluating requirements' realisation and the resulting customer satisfaction. Aside from the facts, that requirements occur in different life cycle stages and that they may change over time concerning type, subject matter and weighting, are regarded. Consequently, applying the model improves the capturing of requirements by systematising them and furthermore, by enabling one to check if all requirements are gathered or if there is a lack of information.

Keywords:

• requirements management
• multi-dimensional model
• feedback
• degree of performance

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for supporting their work within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre 696.