Requirements Management: How to Ensure You Achieve What You Need from Your Projects

Poor requirements management is one of the top five contributors to poor project performance. In extreme, safety critical or emergency-relief situations, failure to satisfy the real needs of the project stakeholders may well lead directly to loss of life or human suffering; other, more mundane, projects can also be severely compromised. Dr Mario Kossmann’s Requirements Management looks at the process from the perspectives of both Program and Project Management and Systems Engineering, showing the crucial role of RM in both contexts. The author puts great emphasis on the human aspects of any project, which is also significant given that over-emphasis on technical or technological aspects at the expense of the human side is another major source of project shortfalls. The book offers illustrated examples of systems of different levels of complexity (one simple system, one complex, and one highly complex system) to help you categorize your own system and enable you to select the right level of formality, a suitable organization and a set of techniques and tools to carry out your requirements work. It includes a series of comprehensive checklists which can be used immediately to improve urgent requirements aspects. This is a practical and realistic guide to requirements management that provides a flexible, hands-on and innovative approach to developing and managing program, project and system requirements at different levels of complexity; read it and use the advice offered to ensure your projects can actually deliver, first time, without the need for costly and time-consuming rework.

About the Author

Dr Mario Kossmann is an experienced Systems Engineer and Capability Integrator for Airbus, having previously worked for Blohm & Voss as Systems Engineer, Technical Manager and Consultant in Services Marketing. He has served as a naval officer with the German and French navies, and was awarded an MEng in Aerospace Technology from the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich (Germany), an MBA from the University of Warwick (UK) and a Ph.D. in Requirements Engineering from the University of the West of England. He is the author of the book Delivering Excellent Service Quality in Aviation (Ashgate 2006), as well as numerous research publications in the field of Systems Engineering. Mario is also a certified Project Manager and a Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP).