Documenting and Managing Requirements

Dependencies that exist between individual requirements help to guide prioritization and highlight possible risks to the project's success. For example, if you have one requirement that the customer address will be captured and another requirement stating that the system will assign work to staff based on where the customer lives, then the 'work assignment' requirement depends on the customer address requirement. From this dependency analysis, you now know that the customer address MUST/SHALL be captured before the work assignment requirement will be met. It also provides incentive to refine the address requirement to include all relevant address elements.

Requirements may also have dependencies on other projects or the existing infrastructure. For example, if your project will interface with the deliverable for another project, you may have requirements that are dependent on the output of the other project. If that project fails, your requirement may need to be modified or invalidated.