The purpose of this activity is to make the scope of the system being developed as explicit as possible, and focus on a
manageable body of requirements work for a development cycle.
Relationships
Parent Activities
Requirements
Description
This activity addresses:
Prioritizing and refining the input to the selection of features and Requirements
that are to be included in the current iteration (see Prioritize Use Cases).
Defining the set of behavioral scenarios, for one or more use
cases, that represent some significant central functionality (see Prioritize Use Cases).
Defining how traceability will be maintained, including which requirement attributes and traceability
relationships to maintain (see Manage Dependencies).
Refining the Vision to document the scope of the solution (see Develop Vision).
The scope of a project is defined by the set of requirements allocated to it. Managing project scope to fit the
available resources (time, people, and money) is key to managing successful projects.
The System Analyst role is responsible for determining requirements
attribute values of priority, effort, cost, risk values etc., from the appropriate stakeholders, which are collected in
the repository of requirements attributes. These will be used by the Project Manager role when planning each iteration and will enable the Software Architect role to identify the architecturally significant scenario's or complete use cases, which will help define
the Use-Case View of the architecture (see Prioritize Use Cases).
Properties
Event Driven
Multiple Occurrences
Ongoing
Optional
Planned
Repeatable
Staffing
The people involved in this activity should all be members of the architecture team. The architecture team will
facilitate a session for various team members to discuss how to best prioritize the requirements.
It is also helpful for team leaders to be trained in negotiation skills and for the project to have a champion in the
organization, as well as on the customer side. Product/project champions should have the organizational power to refuse
scope changes beyond the available resources or to expand resources to accommodate additional scope.
Usage
Usage Guidance
This activity should be performed continuously throughout the project.
Key Considerations
Using Requirements Attributes, such as priority, effort, and risk, as the
basis for negotiating the inclusion of a requirement is a particularly useful technique for managing scope. Focusing on
the attributes rather than the requirements themselves helps desensitize negotiations that are otherwise contentious.