Requirements prioritization

Why?

Determine which candidate requirements should be implemented first.

How?

Gather requirements by interviewing and studying stakeholders and their contexts. Determine whether requirements are clear and complete. Identify priorities together with stakeholders. Requirement lists could include requirements for the user, design, context, architecture, technical aspects or performance. Requirements can be written as a list, or explained in the form of user stories.

Ingredients

• An analytic view.
• The ability to write clear, unambiguous requirements.
• A way to indicate priorities (e.g. MoSCoW or a backlog).

In practice

Requirement lists are typical for large projects and are used for release planning. To minimize risk during development, the most important high-risk requirements are implemented first.