Prioritize the Requirements

Prioritizing Requirements is imperative to the success of a project, as it ensures that analysis, development, testing and implementation resources are focused on the most critical aspects of the system. Prioritization is a decision process that allocates a priority to each Requirement; the most common criteria for categorization is business value. Business value is typically determined by the cost-benefit analysis of the value the implemented Requirement will produce for the organization or its customers. Other factors might be policy or regulatory compliance, urgency, business or technical risk and the likelihood of success. Requirements can be visualized in a Kanban board which can be used to indicate priority by moving items from a Backlog lane to a Queue Lane and also allowing items to be ordered within the lanes. For more information see the Kanban Boards Help topic.

Alternatively, Searches or Model Views could be used to create a list of requirements based on some criteria that would enable the Requirements to be prioritized.

Requirement Priority Property

There is a wide range of criteria that can be used for prioritization, and each organization and project will typically use some type of weighted average to determine the priority. Enterprise Architect has flexible and complete support for Requirement prioritization, as each element has a built-in 'Priority' property that can be set to indicate its priority, allowing the user to select the allocated priority from a drop down list.

The list of priorities is conveniently pre-loaded when you install Enterprise Architect, but these can be edited or completely revised to suit an organization or project. They can even be imported as reference data from a previous project or, if the current project was created based on a template, the organization's priorities could be pre-loaded from the base model. They can be set up using this ribbon option:

     Settings > Reference Data > Model Types > General Types > Priority

Changing the Priority Collaboratively

The process of selecting criteria and assigning priority is typically collaborative, and is often done in a workshop with stakeholders or their representatives debating the categorization. In previous eras this was a laborious and difficult process, but Enterprise Architect has some useful features for working with Requirement properties, including priority. There are a number of windows - including the Package List and the Diagram List - that support working with the Requirements and editing the priority in-line, automatically filtering or sorting the list of Requirements based on the newly assigned priority. The Specification Manager is a useful tool for this purpose, providing a text-based interface where the Requirements and their notes can be viewed and priorities can be selected from a drop down list. The interface also displays a number of other properties that are typically useful for prioritization, such as Status and Complexity. For more information see the Editing Elements Help topic.

When a Requirement property is changed and saved in any window or diagram, the property will be changed in all other views and any other users viewing the repository will immediately be able to see the change.

Dashboard Diagams

Enterprise Architect has a series of Dashboard diagrams that can be used to create a compelling view of the Priority of Requirements in a Package, with the option to include sub-Packages. There are a number of pre-configured Charts that can be used to display the ratio of Priority values for Requirements in a part of the model. Filters add another level of user configuration, allowing a modeler to, for example, exclude Requirements of a particular Status or ensure only Requirements for the current phase are displayed. For more information, see the Dashboard Diagrams Help topic.

Visualization with Kanban Boards

Enterprise Architect has a Kanban Board diagram that can be used to manage Requirements and other specification or project management elements such as Change. The Kanban Board is particularly useful for managing the priority of Requirements and other elements. The elements can simply be dragged onto the diagram and then between columns, allowing teams to manage and visualize the progress a Requirement makes between specification and implementation.

The Kanban diagram can be configured so that when an element is dragged between columns the priority of the element is automatically changed. For more information see the Kanban Boards Help topic.