Requirements Life Cycle Management
What to know
Requirements life cycle management keeps requirements traceable, approved, and controlled from inception to retirement. Know traceability types: backward (to business need or source) and forward (to design, build, test, and delivered value). Requirements attributes-ID, owner, priority, status, source, complexity, and rationale-make management possible. Baselines mark an approved state; change control assesses impact before approval. Approval does not freeze requirements forever; it creates a known state from which changes can be evaluated. Also understand reuse, maintaining requirements for future use, and verifying that requirements remain aligned as the business changes.
Traps
Candidates often think traceability is only forward or only for testing. Both directions matter: backward proves the requirement is justified; forward shows what will be affected by a change. Another trap is treating every change with equal ceremony; impact and risk should drive the level of review. A third is abandoning requirements after sign-off-requirements must be maintained, versioned, and retired deliberately.
Worked example
A late change requests a new tax rule. Before approval, check the requirement's backward trace to the business need and forward links to design, test cases, and training. If the forward links show heavy rework, the change is not rejected automatically-it is assessed and decided by the right authority.
Rule of thumb
Every requirement should have an owner, a status, and at least one trace link; if you cannot answer why it exists and what depends on it, management is incomplete.