Role: Requirements Specifier

Description

Different aspects of the requirements are typically documented in different types of software requirements artifacts; as such the requirements will usually be defined in multiple artifacts. A person playing the Requirements Specifier role may be responsible for many of those artifacts -such as one or more use-case packages- and for maintaining the integrity of the requirements within and between those artifacts. It is recommended that the person playing this role for a given use-case package is also responsible for detailing its contained use cases and actors.

Related Information

This section provides links to additional information related to this role.

Staffing

It can be beneficial to include people who will subsequently act in the designer, test analyst or technical writer roles in the group of staff playing the Requirements Specifier role.

Skills

A person acting in the Requirements Specifier role needs good communication skills, both in terms of expressing themselves verbally and in writing. Knowledge of the business and technology domain is also important, but is not typically necessary for every project team member acting in this role. For the requirements specifier role to be carried out efficiently, the person playing this role needs to be familiar with the productivity tools used to capture the results of the requirements work.

Role assignment approaches

The Requirements Specifier role can be assigned in the following ways:

• Assign one or more staff members to perform the Requirements Specifier role only. This works well in large teams, particularly in situations where there are domain experts available who have significant domain knowledge to specify appropriate requirements.
• Assign one or more staff members to perform both the Requirements Specifier and Test Analyst roles. This strategy is a good option for small to mid-sized test teams, and is often used where domain experts are available to play both roles. You need to be careful that appropriate effort is devoted to satisfying both of these roles.

Further Reading

See the references page for further information.

Rational Unified Process