Develop Customer Requirements
Stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces are collected and translated into customer requirements. The needs of stakeholders (e.g., customers, end users, suppliers, builders, and testers) are the basis for determining customer requirements. The stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints,
interfaces, operational concepts, and product concepts are analyzed, harmonized, refined, and elaborated for translation into a set of customer requirements.
Frequently, stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces are poorly identified or conflicting. Since stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and limitations should be clearly identified
and understood, an iterative process is used throughout the life of the project to accomplish this objective. To facilitate the required interaction, a surrogate for the end user or customer is frequently involved to represent their needs and help resolve conflicts. The customer relations or marketing part of the organization as well as members of the development team from disciplines such as human engineering or support can be used as surrogates. Environmental,legal, and other constraints should be considered when creating and
resolving the set of customer requirements.
SP 1.1 Elicit Needs
Elicit stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces for all phases of the product life cycle.
Eliciting goes beyond collecting requirements by proactively identifying additional requirements not explicitly provided by customers. Additional requirements should address the various product life-cycle activities and their impact on the product.
Examples of techniques to elicit needs include the following:
· Technology demonstrations
· Interface control working groups
· Technical control working groups
· Interim project reviews
· Questionnaires, interviews, and operational scenarios obtained from end users
· Operational walkthroughs and end-user task analysis
· Prototypes and models
· Brainstorming
· Quality Function Deployment
· Market surveys
· Beta testing
· Extraction from sources such as documents, standards, or specifications
· Observation of existing products, environments, and workflow patterns
· Use cases
· Business case analysis
· Reverse engineering (for legacy products)
Subpractices
1. Engage relevant stakeholders using methods for eliciting needs, expectations, constraints, and external interfaces.
The following specific practice appears in the continuous representation as
SP 1.1-1, but is subsumed in the staged representation by SP 1.1, Elicit Needs.
The specific practice is presented here in gray only as informative material.
SP 1.1-1 Collect Stakeholder Needs
Identify and collect stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces for all phases of the product life cycle.
The basic activity addresses the receipt of requirements that a customer provides to define what is needed or desired. These requirements may or may not be stated in technical terms. They should address the various product life-cycle activities and their impact on the product.
SP 1.2 Develop the Customer Requirements
Transform stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces into customer requirements.
For Integrated Product and Process Development
Relevant stakeholders representing all phases of the product’s life cycle should include business as well as technical functions. In this way, concepts for all product-related lifecycle processes are considered concurrently with the concepts for the products. Customer requirements result from informed decisions on the business as well as technical effects of their requirements. The various inputs from the customer must be consolidated, missing information must be obtained, and conflicts must be resolved in documenting the recognized set of customer requirements. The customer requirements may include needs, expectations, and
constraints with regard to verification and validation.
Typical Work Products
1. Customer requirements
2. Customer constraints on the conduct of verification
3. Customer constraints on the conduct of validation
Subpractices
1. Translate the stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces into documented customer requirements.
2. Define constraints for verification and validation.
