Requirements or Prerequisites are all the needs at the requirement level needed for the execution of the different phases of a project. It’s a list of facilities, infrastructure elements, specific rules in firewalls, base software definitions and dependencies that are required.
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The prerequisite analysis stage must accompany the project planning phase. To keep the criticality of the correctness of the items to request, which are often difficult to achieve. Preferably after closing the scope (SOW Stage).
The output product of the requirements identification stage must be a detailed list of them. It should also have its corresponding assignment or reference to the schedule agreed between the parties involved.
At this level, it will be possible to have visibility of the items that next phases of the project’s progress will need. This way, the team can plan the different actions that must execute to have the requirements for each phase on time.
Normally the prerequisites can vary by environments, mainly between test and production environments. So they must identify and group them.
Types of Prerequisites
There are several types of prerequisites, which can be grouped into:
Infrastructure and Architecture
Needs and definitions at the level of equipment and modules interconnectivity. In this section, the specifications of the hardware required by node or cluster are detailed. You must also specify the versions of operating systems and applications that will form the solution.
Security
Bases of security that will be necessary to install and configure for the solution to work properly. From user access rights to policy definitions of roles and profiles that will be used for the operation or administration.
User
Profiles and functions of human users and process interfaces that will interact with the deliverable or deliverables of the project.
There are different tools that allow us to comply and establish monitoring compliance of the requirements for the parties involved in the development of the project.
Connectivity Matrix
For the case that the solution to be delivered presents needs for connectivity assurance at ports and protocols level, the connectivity matrix solution is presented.
In this case, the origins address are presented at the level of columns and the destinations at the level of rows, so the intersection will detail the port or ports and protocols that will be necessary to allow communication for the solution to operate.
Architecture Diagrams
Based on the previous point, Connectivity Matrix, it will be possible to generate architecture diagrams to show the connectivity needs at a graphic level. This diagram may have different colors to indicate the status of the requirement, and it’s visually easier to understand the status of the situation.
Prerequisite Checklist With Evaluation of Prerequisites by Phases
Added to the architecture diagram, which gives us an idea of the interconnection of the modules and the status of each requirement, the checklist is presented. This can be formed by a shared spreadsheet in the cloud, in which the different participants of the process have access to be able to have online the status of each one of them and exchange collaborative information.
Using this guideline, an excellent requirements guide can be written to execute any project!
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