Reporting requirements is essential for any software system or business application. In order to objectively measure the effectiveness of a system or product, you need precise analytics. That’s why it’s so important to carefully vet any new reporting function before putting it into use. In this article, we’ll define requirements reports, explore some common tools and documentation guides, and discuss how to create a useful reporting requirements document.
What is a Requirements Report?
A requirements report is a document that outlines the necessary elements of a project or system. It includes information on the purpose, scope, and goals of the project, as well as the stakeholders involved. The requirements report also details what needs to be done in order to complete the project successfully.
A system requirements document explains what a product will look like when it is finished. The document describes the product’s purpose, features, operating conditions, user experience, characteristics, and national or international standards to which it must adhere.
A requirements report can provide stakeholders with a preview of the overall set of requirements, depending on their needs and interests at that moment during the project. This type of report is based on views, which per the IREB syllabus are categorized into three types:
- Selective Views: By selecting specific criteria, you can generate a subset of requirements. For instance, the list could be narrowed down to show only those with high priority.
- Projective Views: While only a few features of the requirements are visualized, more intricate details such as its history are concealed to hone in on the current version of the requirements.
- Aggregating Views: By analyzing the requirement set, helpful information that is not immediately obvious is generated; such as a pie chart displaying what percent of requirements are in each status (pending, reviewed, approved, validated, etc.).
Views are created by utilizing filters and sort settings. For the majority of reports, a combination of selective, projective, and aggregating views is employed to generate data.
According to a study by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, developing and tracking system requirements remains difficult for developers. The main issues highlighted in this research were a failure to adequately address user or operational needs, as well as the inability of stakeholders to keep track of requirements throughout the product development life cycle.
Requirements reports are important because they help ensure that all stakeholders have a clear understanding of what is required for a successful outcome. Without a requirements report, it would be difficult to track progress or identify potential problems.
Benefits of Requirements Reporting:
There are many benefits of using Requirments Reporting tools, templates, and documentation guides. Some of these benefits include:
- Improved clarity and understanding of project goals and objectives
- Better tracking of progress and identification of potential problems
- Enhanced communication between stakeholders
- Increased likelihood of success for the project or system.
Requirements Reporting allows to deliver the right information to each stakeholder at each moment in the project lifecycle. It helps stakeholders to make the right decisions based on the right data. Requirements Reporting can help make any software system or business application more successful.
Creating a Useful Reporting Requirements Document:
When creating a reporting requirements document, the following are the things you will need to include the following information:
- Product Description
- User requirements
- Environmental requirements
- Standards
- Constraint information
Once you have considered these factors, you can begin to put together a useful reporting requirements document. Remember to include all essential information and make sure that it is clear and easy to understand. With a well-crafted requirements report, you can ensure that your project or system is successful.
Let’s start creating our document!
Step 1: Collect Requirements. The product’s stakeholders, those who will pay for it and those who will use it, should be noted in the system-requirements report. A well-defined procedure for collecting needs is strongly advised. Use cases, scenarios, prototypes, and a thorough examination of contract stipulations are some useful approaches for gathering requirements.
Step 2: Apply Industry Standards. In the system-requirements report, list any industry standards, international standard organizations (ISO), and other government or legal requirements that apply to the product.
Step 3: Describe the system’s operational environment, such as interfaces with power sources, other equipment, software, databases, and users. For the purpose of the system-requirements report, safety criteria may be included in the operating environment.
Step 4: Examine limitations. Constraints on the product specifications may stem from users, processing power, electricity requirements, cost, and hardware and software integration.
Step 5: Make a list of functional requirements, such as the speed of operations, resources utilized, performance in extreme environments, testing standards, quality, safety, and dependability.
Step 6: Create a development timetable with the planned completion of key milestones along a timeline.
Step 7: Write the introduction for your system requirements report. The title page includes the name of the organization, the date, and the author’s name. On the cover page, signatures from the responsible parties may be included. Make a table of contents and a list of figures and tables during this step. Create an introduction that addresses any required references.
To produce reports that are based on selective, projective, or aggregating views, the defining of requirement attributes is a necessity. These criteria should allow users to apply filters, define sorting criteria and calculate aggregate values. Therefore, specifying the appropriate set of attributes is critical for successful requirements reporting. This will vary depending on different stakeholders’ information needs; however, ISO-29148 and other standards provide an overview of some commonly used attributes such as type, priority, author source history, status, risk effort, etc.
Benefits of Using Requirements Reporting Tools
By utilizing reporting tools, companies can score new opportunities to build customer satisfaction based on insightful data-driven reports. In addition, they help you maximize productivity by enhancing client services and providing timely analytics. Not only that, but these solutions boast a plethora of other benefits including:
- Streamlined Workflow: Requirements reporting tools provide an efficient and organized way to track requirements and their related activities. They allow users to enter information into a central repository, making it easy to access and share data with other stakeholders. This enables project teams to quickly identify any discrepancies or missing elements in the requirements definition process.
- Improved Visibility: By providing detailed reporting capabilities, requirements reporting tools can help increase the visibility of project-related items including cost estimates, budget forecasts, scope changes, and resource allocations. Having clear visibility into these areas helps teams ensure that projects are progressing efficiently and according to plan.
- Increased Collaboration: By leveraging centralized requirements tracking software, project teams can easily collaborate on tasks from different locations. This makes it easier to ensure that all stakeholders have the same understanding of project requirements and can work together to meet them.
- Increased Accountability: Requirements reporting tools provide an auditable record for tracking changes and progress over time. This helps teams hold each other accountable for their responsibilities, ensuring that projects stay on track and deliver desired outcomes.
- Reduced Costs: Requirements reporting software can save organizations money by reducing overhead costs associated with manual data entry, paper-based filing systems, and inefficient communication processes between team members. Additionally, since these tools are often cloud-based, they don’t require large upfront investments or costly maintenance contracts which further reduces the total cost of ownership.
Visure Requirements ALM Platform:
The power to efficiently deliver the products your customers demand.
Visure Requirments ALM Platform allows you to manage requirements throughout the development process and ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page. With this powerful tool, you can improve communication, increase clarity, and deliver the products your customers demand.
Visure Report Manager generates custom reports based on the Visure Requirements projects, helping deliver the necessary regulatory compliance evidence, requirements specifications, test session summaries, dashboards, or any other required output.
At the time of report creation, Visure Report Manager pulls the data from the Visure database, populates the selected template, and allows the export of this data in various different formats, including, in one single report all the information, including a glossary of terms, requirements, use cases, test scenarios, traceability between them, UML and functional diagrams, overall status, and any other information from the projects.
Some Other Requirements Reporting Tools
When considering a requirements reporting tool, there are several key features potential users should look for. Firstly, it is important to find one that allows for easy customization of reports. This will allow you to tailor the output of your reports to meet specific needs and goals.
- JIRA: JIRA is a popular requirement tracking and reporting tool from Atlassian that offers great features like bug tracking, project management, agile development, etc. It also provides powerful visualization capabilities to help you understand your data better.
- IBM Rational DOORS: IBM Rational DOORS is an enterprise requirements management system that helps users capture and manage detailed requirements information over multiple projects or product releases in a collaborative environment. It provides an intuitive web-based interface, powerful reporting capabilities, and traceability throughout the development process.
- SpiraTest: SpiraTest is a comprehensive software test management tool that also serves as a required reporting tool with features like interactive reports, rich charts & graphs, task tracking, etc. It’s popular among software testing teams for its easy integration with other platforms like JIRA and Jenkins CI.
- VersionOne: VersionOne is an agile project management and planning platform that includes comprehensive requirements reporting capabilities. It helps teams track, prioritize, and manage requirements in an easy-to-use interface.
- Axosoft: Axosoft is a project management tool designed for software development teams. Along with its tracking capabilities, it also offers powerful reporting features to help you analyze your requirement data more effectively.
- Zephyr Enterprise Edition: Zephyr Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive test management solution that provides users with real-time visibility into the entire testing process from initial requirements definition to final product delivery. It has advanced reporting capabilities which make it easier to quickly identify defects and trends in the system or application under test.
- HP ALM: HP ALM is a requirements management tool from Hewlett Packard which provides users with comprehensive tracking and reporting capabilities. It also offers powerful integration with other HP tools, such as HP Quality Center, making it easier to manage the entire project lifecycle in one place.
- ReQtest: ReQtest is an online requirement management software that helps teams capture, track, and analyze product requirements more effectively. With its intuitive user interface and powerful reporting features, it’s a great solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses.
- Microsoft Access: MS Access is a database management system that allows users to easily create and manage requirements data in an organized way. With its easy-to-use forms and queries, Access makes it possible to analyze complex datasets quickly.
These are some of the requirement reporting tools available on the market today. Each tool has its own unique set of features that can meet the needs of any organization or team. Before making a purchase decision, be sure to assess the features of each product carefully and determine which one best meets your needs.
Conclusion:
Requirements reporting is the process of creating documents that contain all the information on requirements that stakeholders need along the project lifecycle. Requirements reports can also display an excerpt from the total set of requirements containing only the content of interest for a stakeholder at a specific point during the project. The main benefits of requirements reporting are that it helps to ensure that all stakeholders have a common understanding of the system’s requirements, reduces ambiguity and confusion, makes it easier to identify potential problems with the system early on, and can help to improve communication among stakeholders. In order to create effective requirements reports, you need to first understand who your stakeholders are and what their needs and expectations are. You also need to have a clear vision for the system you want to build. Visure Requirements ALM Platform can help you streamline this process by providing an end-to-end solution for requirements management. Request a free 30-day trial now to check out the tool!
