Hello All,
I am new to business analysis but I have learned a lot since I joined to forum. Thank you all for that.
I need some information about the following requirements documents:
1)Functional Requirements Documents
2)Requirements Traceability Matrix and
3)Requirements Change Matrix
What are these documents used for and do we always have to create these documents each time we do requirements gathering?
Thanks,
gchuba
gchuba,
There about as many business analysis documents out there as there are ways to describe them. Are you a member of the IIBA? As a business analyst your big pay-off comes when you deliver the BRD otherwise known as the Business Requirements Document. It is not a single document but rather a collection of all your efforts. The BRD will include all of you requirements and traceability. You've mentioned 'matrix' a couple of times. Since a matrix is just a data array of two or more dimensions it's a really useful way to associate things to each other. I like to use a matrix to associate my stakeholders to the functionality that they require. Stakeholders along the top and abilities (requirements) along the side. You have also mentioned change matrix - by this do you mean an association between a change request and a requirement?
BRD - by outlining to you what is typically put into a Business Requirements Document I hope that I am answering your question.
Hello pmcleod,
Thank you very much for your response. What I am trying to understand is what a "Change Management" is. When I hear of change management, I think of an existing system that is going through a change. For example, moving from Great Plains to PeopleSoft. Could that be considered a change management project or do I have all wrong?
Hey there
"Change Management" is an ambiguous term in the world projects.
Techncially change management refers broadly to any change activity that faciliates transition from one state to another.
In my experience this phrase usually means changing business processs or organisational structure, and the change is focused n the impact on the people. It is often a part of automation, workflow or outsourcing projects.
Change control is also often referred to as change management. CHange control is where a request is made to a project to change something hey are doing; eg add new features to an IT system being built, or to include the new sales team in the rollout of the CRM systems, etc. Change control is about applying structured decicion making and analysis to these requests so that projects are able to manage their workload poperly.
You could think of "Change Management" as one of the core coordination structures required for managing changes to existing processes or systems. In many cases you will have a change management group that first reviews the proposed change and its potential impact and then approves the change or requests additional information and coordination. As the number of dependencies between processes and systems increase and the number of people making changes increase it becomes essential to have effective change management in place to keep small changes from potentially causing major disruptions. Also in the event of a an issue caused by a recently implemented change an effective change management system will assist with documentation and tracking of the change so it will be easier to diagnose what caused the issue and roll it back.
Hope this helps. Cheers.
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