Requirement Management Practices for Ensuring Compliance with Stakeholders’ Expectations in Complex Projects
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Perustieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Authors
Date
2015-06-10
Department
Major/Subject
Service Design and Engineering
Mcode
IL3005
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Service Design and Engineering (SDE)
Language
en
Pages
73+12
Series
Abstract
Requirement Management (RM) is an important discipline of system engineering that includes defining, analyzing, specifying, verifying and tracing requirements. Lack of proper RM for complex projects leads to unsuccessful projects and unsatisfied stakeholders. Thousands of requirements from diverse group of stakeholders and long project duration make complex projects vulnerable to risks related to poor RM. Identifying the requirements from various stakeholders and fulfilling their expectations is a challenging task. This can be improved to some extent by improving RM process in the company. The goal of this thesis is to study ways to improve the RM process in large companies where projects are complex and are comprised of diverse stakeholders. For this purpose, a case study in a multinational company, which is engaged in complex projects, was performed. The research in this thesis is based on both literature review and empirical studies. Information about RM, its good practices and challenges of introducing RM process and tools were studied as a part of literature review. In the empirical part, action research approach was used to understand and diagnose the current RM process of the case company and to select promising commercial off the-shelf RM tools. In this research, challenges in RM due to complexity of requirement documents and lack of use of RM tool were observed in the company. Requirements being missed from complex tenders, undocumented discussions and lack of requirement traceability are some of the challenges caused due to lack of a harmonized RM process. Most of the good practices of RM like use of requirements matrix, collaboration between sales and project teams and frequent communication with stakeholders can be applied as standard for all projects to improve RM process. Many good practices of RM can be implemented by the use of suitable RM tool. However, adoption of a RM tool is a challenging process and requires continuous dedication and effort.Description
Supervisor
Kauppinen, MarjoThesis advisor
Hellström, MagnusAhtola, Simo
Keywords
requirement management, requirement engineering, requirement management tool, requirement traceability, complex projects, requirements