What exactly is product requirements management? It sounds like another one of those buzzwords that has nothing to warrant it being an individual term. It’s just something in the timber of how it sounds, right? Well, that’s not the case. In fact, requirements management is a very important sub field of product management, and it does merit a lot of focus and strategy to implement.
So, what is product requirements management, and what are some good things to keep in mind when using it? Ok, first, let’s define this concept briefly. Requirements management is all about first documenting all important statistics and standards to meet in a product, such as customer expectations, quality level goals and so forth. Along with this, it also requires documenting and measuring required resources (on a very precise resolution) needed to implement production of the product, and continue to provide the product.
So, with that in mind, while it’s usually considered a product management subset completely, this discipline actually applies to product management and production management in nearly equal parts. This duality doesn’t shape it, but it does merit pointing out that both fields have their part to play which depends on handling this well.
So, what are some things to consider in requirements management? Well, first of all, you need to spend some time worrying about your customer feedback methods. Are you getting everything you can with the most minimal level of Heisenberg effect? If so, that means you’re going beyond just focus groups and customer service. You’re listening to social networks, you’re taking surveys, you’re listening to every channel customers communicate on.
This gives you better data for their contribution to defining all the requirements for your product.
Along with this, establishing standard metrics and unit scales for measuring quality and aspect standards of the product is also going to make things more efficient. If you have a scale and measurement system that easily, numerically defines goals and your proximity to reaching them on these aspects, you’re running a well tuned machine.
Also, requirements management entails procuring resources to accomplish things. Having standard requisition form templates and protocols in place to accommodate this (and avoiding the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing) is also a big step in handling needs requirement effectively and smoothly.
What else can we do? Well, borrowing from change management’s small unit scale for implementation, you should do measurements and tunings to things to better reach the defined needs if you use smaller time windows, or bigger ones that can spontaneously be broken into smaller ones when a situation arises that calls for it.
Beyond that, there’s not much to say about specific tips. Product requirements management is an important skill, and defining all of the goals and needs that a product has to be produced, be sound to represent your company, and that meets the desires of the customers is worth your time. Following the advice above is a big step to handling this well, but you should not stop here. Do further research, because there are methods to this madness that I couldn’t discuss here.
