Project Requirements

A requirement is a condition or capability that must exist in a product, service, or result to meet a business need.

If the scope is clear and stable, teams can work with stakeholders early on to define and document requirements during planning.

In some projects, the understanding of requirements is high-level at the beginning, but they may change and evolve as the project progresses.

When project requirements are not clearly defined at the beginning, teams can use prototypes, demonstrations, storyboards, and mock-ups to gradually shape and refine the requirements.

If requirements are not managed properly, it can lead to rework, scope creep, customer dissatisfaction, budget overruns, schedule delays, and even project failure.

Scope Definition

Scope is the total of all products, services, and results that the project will deliver. Like requirements, scope may be:

• clearly defined at the start,
• discovered over time, or
• evolve as the project progresses.

Scope Decomposition

Scope can be broken down by:

• Identifying major deliverables and what success looks like for each.
• Further breaking it into smaller, manageable parts using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to increase clarity.

Example – Product Launch Scope:

• Objectives: Launch product, achieve 5% market share, generate $1M in revenue.
• Deliverables: Development, marketing campaign, training, launch event.
• Exclusions: Post-launch support, future enhancements.
• Constraints: 6-month deadline, $250,000 budget.