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Requirment specification tool for small scale projets (free and open source)

SylvanoMTL

Good afternoon, 

I am trying to formalise my work as part of a new role in a new company. The role was vacant for a long time and there is not much structure around me. I am trying my best to manage projects and avoid scope creeps by drafting requirements based on the discussions I have with my internal customers. Discussions are very often fuzzy and it is not rare that after a month, something comes up on the table, because the internal customer only formulated his wish orally in a corridor and thought I accounted on his comments. My background is very generalist, and  I am looking for a low cost, easy to use solution, that can be understood by a wide range of staff. I guess that if money and time were not an issue I would onboard using IBM rational DOORS, but price is too prohibitive.

I have tried to share the spreadsheets that contains the requirements, but this is always ignored. Also the use of the spreadsheet is not convenient and quite segregated from my other working tools.

I am doing mostly hardware design, but also some software.

I am therefore looking for a software solution that would:

1) help to capture the requirement specifications

2) allow to share the requirements with the customer

3) Have a freeze of the requirement, agreed with the customer.

4) Have a validation plan

5) Have some compatibility with other project management tools (e.g. MS Project)

6) Ideally open source and maintained

7) Ideally Free, or small fee license

Do you have any suggestions?

Parents

  • While gathering the requirements from your internal stakeholders and reporting their status along the project is very important, it looks like the real difficulty is to make the internal customer aware of the choice/recommendations and the implications they have.

    Perhaps, it would help to call some formal meeting with the internal stakeholders and some senior managers sponsoring the project ,typically whoever is responsible to grant the money to the project, so as to ensure there is agreement on the steps and direction to take.

    I suggest:

    • A first formal meeting at project start, when you give the outlook of what is being required, the difficulties you have identified, the resources you need  and the schedule to implement the project
    • A second formal meeting when you have a clear recommendation on how to solve the difficulties you identified and the money you are going to spend. This signals a point of no return to your internal customers and sponsor
    • A third formal meeting when you implemented the project and know how it performs, prior to making it live of in production. This is to ensure the quality level and other key performance parameters are accepted by your internal customers and sponsor
    • A forth formal meeting after the project has been running for some time to close it, release resources still allocated, share lesson learned and give recommendations.

    Try out this additional communication method with your customers and sponsor and hopefully changes will be reduced. After all, it doesn't cost a lot of money though for sure you need to use some of your time to organise and hold these meetings.

Reply

  • While gathering the requirements from your internal stakeholders and reporting their status along the project is very important, it looks like the real difficulty is to make the internal customer aware of the choice/recommendations and the implications they have.

    Perhaps, it would help to call some formal meeting with the internal stakeholders and some senior managers sponsoring the project ,typically whoever is responsible to grant the money to the project, so as to ensure there is agreement on the steps and direction to take.

    I suggest:

    • A first formal meeting at project start, when you give the outlook of what is being required, the difficulties you have identified, the resources you need  and the schedule to implement the project
    • A second formal meeting when you have a clear recommendation on how to solve the difficulties you identified and the money you are going to spend. This signals a point of no return to your internal customers and sponsor
    • A third formal meeting when you implemented the project and know how it performs, prior to making it live of in production. This is to ensure the quality level and other key performance parameters are accepted by your internal customers and sponsor
    • A forth formal meeting after the project has been running for some time to close it, release resources still allocated, share lesson learned and give recommendations.

    Try out this additional communication method with your customers and sponsor and hopefully changes will be reduced. After all, it doesn't cost a lot of money though for sure you need to use some of your time to organise and hold these meetings.

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