Establish and maintain product and product component requirements, which are based on the customer requirements.

The customer requirements may be expressed in the customer’s terms and may be nontechnical descriptions. The product requirements are the expression of these requirements in technical terms that can be used for design decisions. An example of this translation is found in the first House of Quality Function Deployment, which maps customer desires into technical parameters. For instance, “solid sounding door” might be mapped to size, weight, fit, dampening, and resonant frequencies.

Product and product component requirements address the satisfaction of customer, business, and project objectives and associated attributes, such as effectiveness and affordability.

Derived requirements also address the cost and performance of other lifecycle phases (e.g., production, operations, and disposal) to the extent compatible with business objectives.

The modification of requirements due to approved requirement changes is covered by the “maintain” function of this specific practice; whereas, the administration of requirement changes is covered by the Requirements Management process area.

Refer to the Requirements Management process area for more information about managing changes to requirements.

Typical Work Products

1.    Derived requirements

2.    Product requirements

3.    Product component requirements

Subpractices

1.    Develop requirements in technical terms necessary for product and product component design.

Develop architecture requirements addressing critical product qualities and performance necessary for product architecture design.

2.    Derive requirements that result from design decisions.

Refer to the Technical Solution process area for more information about developing the solutions that generate additional derived requirements.

Selection of a technology brings with it additional requirements. For instance, use of electronics requires additional technology-specific requirements such as electromagnetic interference limits.

3.    Establish and maintain relationships between requirements for consideration during change management and requirements allocation.

Refer to the Requirements Management process area for more information about maintaining requirements traceability.

Relationships between requirements can aid in evaluating the impact of changes.