Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
with appropriate talents to specific activities. Similarly, when a problem is
encountered, a project manager may choose to reassign an engineer, or engineers,
with skills appropriate for correcting the issue. If this does not appear to be a viable
solution, a software engineering firm may also choose to hire new engineers to
pick up the extra workload, with careful attention paid to the relevance of those
engineers' skill sets to the problem in question.
If the development team is unable to find an answer that seems reasonable, it
may be necessary to resort to modifying the original project specifications. This
can result in the elimination of certain system requirements that are not deemed
absolutely necessary. This practice, known as requirements scrubbing, is a risky
endeavor, though. The project manager must be able to identify those extra
requirements which can be removed without significantly reducing the function-
ality of the system, or altering the final product from that envisioned by the client.
To aid in this, it is important to maintain constant communication with the client,
so that changes in requirements do not come as a surprise when the final product is
delivered. The use of an incremental development process provides for the
potential of such alterations. This concept dictates that the most important activ-
ities and requirements of a software system are finished first, and that further
development progresses incrementally iterates through less critical portions of the
project. This way, if the decision is made to scrub a component, that component
will most likely not have been completed at the time the decision is made, which
would negate the whole purpose.
If neither reassigning of engineers, nor the scrubbing of certain components will
adequately correct for deviation within a project, a more serious course of action
must be taken. At such a point, it is crucial to admit the mistake, rather than
attempt to make up for it with a solution that will never succeed. Instead, it is
important to recognize that the initial plan was infeasible, and to review and
analyze the requirements and resources in an attempt to create a new, more
effective plan. This, of course, will most likely result in the loss of work, an
adjustment to the final schedule, and possibly an alteration of the end product. It is
therefore absolutely critical to spend the time and resources required to develop an
effective plan before a project gets underway. If a change must be made any later
in the development cycle, it will be costly.
4.5 Document Format Specification
1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose of this document
Describes the purpose of the document, and the intended audience.
1.2 Scope of this document
Describes the scope of this requirements definition effort. Introduces the
