Requirements Analysis

A requirement is a part of a design brief drafted in a very particular way intended to overcome some of the natural pitfalls into which many sponsors fall when creating project briefs.   Typically a sponsor is not expected to draft in any particular fashion. Instead the project manager or a project analyst will work with the sponsor to express the brief in the correct format as follows...

When writing a design brief it is easy to fall into the trap doing a pseudo design based on your own interpretation of the brief.  It is common for sponsors to ask for something like

create a database to do our stock control

the danger with this kind of brief is

a) it does not expose very much about the problem and may actually conceal some things.
b) it assumes one solution to the problem which might not be the best one.

A better format is to state the problem the sponsor wants solved then state requirements which the solution must meet.  E.g.

Problem

Our current stock control is slow and  makes lots of mistakes I want a better solution.

Requirements

The system must

cost less than £10,000 to set up
be run with half the number of people running the current system
require minimal training
etc...

This format is much better for designers because he is given a free hand to find any solution they want and has clear guidelines regarding what will be an acceptable solution.

But this can still be improved by the addition of reasons to each requirement as follows

Problem

Our stock control is slow, makes lots of mistakes I want a better solution.

Requirements

The system must

cost less than £10,000 to set up - because that seems a good number;
be run with half the number of people running the current system - because we are over crowded, I don't want to move;
require minimal training - because training is expensive
etc...

this example brief helps us analyse the requirements much better.  I.e.

The cost requirement could clearly be argued with if there was good reason to spend more.
The people requirement seems very firm as there is a real reason for it.
The minimal training requirement could clearly be breached if it saved money.

You will never receive a brief like this directly from a sponsor but what you should aim for is to work with the project sponsor to develop a brief like this one. This process is referred to as requirements analysis.