Setting Requirements Priorities

Setting Requirements Priorities Luc K. Richard January 21, 2004

Web Services and Application Development

Every software development project is bound by some constraints, and more often than not, those constraints include time. In today's competitive market, there is a definite first-mover advantage, and the first company to release its product has by far the best chance of becoming the market leader.

As a result, you must have some tools in your software development process that help you proactively deal with such time constraints. You, as a project manager, must be able to determine ahead of time which features must make it in the product for the customer to accept it, and which can be delivered in the next release. If your development schedule is aggressive, you're inevitably going to cut some features. The question is, are you cutting features that will cost you a sale?

Must-Have versus Nice-To-Have

Customers are not always reasonable when asked to prioritize requirements, and generally speaking, they'll qualify everything as a must-have.