What is Requirement Analysis?

Every new product or project in the workplace is created in response to a specific business requirement. However, sometimes, certain sticky situations may develop where, even after spending significant time, effort, and resources, there arises a discrepancy between what has been designed and what is precisely needed.

Has any of your clients ever complained that what you delivered him isn't what he exactly ordered? Have you faced trouble with conflicting requirements from multiple customers? A focused and comprehensive business requirements analysis can help you get rid of bottlenecks such as these.

Requirements analysis is a vital aspect of project management. Simply speaking, it is the process of precisely identifying, defining, and documenting the various requirements that are related to a particular business objective. Requirements gathering helps in clearly understanding the needs of the customer, defining the scope of the project, and assessing the timescales and resources required to complete it. In software engineering, such requirements are often called functional specifications. Requirements analysis involves a combination of hardware, software, expertise in engineering as well as excellent people skills.

Importance of Requirements analysis

Requirements analysis is an integral phase in a software development life cycle. However, if the requirements are not identified correctly and at an early stage in the project cycle, it could result in project deliverables not meeting the specific needs of the business or user, ultimately leading to a significant reduction in the project's scheduled budget. Moreover, reworking on the project and fixing the errors could further add to the project cost and time.

Best practices for requirement analysis

• Accurately identifying, analyzing, and defining the problem that the business faces. This should also include information on the solution and the various benefits expected from the solution.
• Ensure feasibility of the business requirements
• Addressing the needs of all the stakeholders and the users is an integral part of the requirement analysis and helps in the deployment phase of the project by improving the adaptability of the users to the new process or software application.
• Create a concise yet comprehensive requirements document and share it with the customer.
• Create a prototype, if needed, to confirm or refine the customer's requirements.
• The pros and cons of the solution must be captured in complete detail.
• During requirements gathering, the planned features of the application, the functional and non-functional requirements, and the details about the implementation of the project must be fully captured.
• The documentation should also comprehensively cover the processes, workflow, dependencies, hierarchies, and so on.

These documentation best practices would offer numerous benefits such as significantly reducing project costs, shortening the software development cycle, minimizing the scope for needs mismatch, improving the productivity of the team, and most importantly enhancing the usability of the application. An accurate and comprehensive requirement analysis also increases the chances of project success.duct or project in the workplace is created in response to a specific business requirement. However, sometimes, certain sticky situations may develop where, even after spending significant time, effort, and resources, there arises a discrepancy between what has been designed and what is precisely needed.