Managing Requirements: For an Integrated Approach from System Engineering to Project Management

Abstract

This paper puts forward several evolutions in methodological approaches to « project management». Firstly, it aims to bring closer the founding models of different engineering approaches including systems engineering and project management recommendations to allow for a greater continuity and enhanced management coherence, from beginning to end of the project. It focuses on operating a generic process, called DECWAYS, based on handling management requirements: (1)analyze the requirements to arrive at a complete inventory of the final product;(2)associate with each one of these requirements, an « indicator » setting a target objective for completion, supplemented by a risk function detailing the risk at hand based on the deviation relative to this target objective; (3) share and allocate the responsibility for requirements follow-up between the project team leaders; (4) organize and coordinate the follow-up of these indicators throughout the product development as proof of a good work management and,(5) finally, validate the total completion of the target objectives through the final prediction/completion conformity of these indicators. Based on this, several operational recommendations are explained and the practicality of DECWAYS embodying these principles is demonstrated using an experimental example for the design/planning of an electronic key. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.