Most Business Analysts are familiar with functional and non-functional requirements, but some organizations like to be more specific when it comes to defining requirement types. Here is a list of different types of requirements that you may not be familiar with.
BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS
Business requirements identify the strategic, tactical, and operational needs along with the goals or objectives of the sponsoring organization. These are documented from a management perspective.
REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS
Regulatory requirements address legislative or legal requirements of an organization. They can be internal or external regulations. These are non-negotiable meaning that they Specify that the system should adhere to law or legislation and you must elaborate on how the business system will meet the regulation.
PROCESS REQUIREMENTS
Process requirements identify what the product should do in order to fulfill the business need.
These requirements can include Functional Areas. Functional areas provide a brief description of the functional area to be included in the solution. Functional area descriptions represent the mandatory process requirements of a system.
REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Reporting requirements identify what reports the product and/or system must be able to manage.
Examples include frequency of the report, run dates/times, recipients of a report, format, data source, distribution methods, storage, or other bits of information that are applied to reporting.
INTERFACE / INTEGRATION REQUIREMENTS
Interface Requirements identify what information is needed to ensure that the system will communicate properly with external components. This can include things like message displays, navigation links, communication interfaces, user interfaces, online forms, and interfaces with other systems.
USABILITY REQUIREMENTS
Usability requirements identify what abilities and expectations of usage experiences the product must conform to. This type of requirement can address how the graphical user interface (GUI) is designed with consideration for the different types of users and their skill levels. This can include things like online help menus, input fields and submit buttons, save and undo buttons, etc.
TRAINING REQUIREMENTS
Training requirements identify user, help desk, and support training required for a product, or system. It can include user guides, technical manuals, certifications, level of training required, number of participants, etc.
SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
Security requirements are a subset of non-functional/supplemental requirements. Security requirements identify the security, confidentiality, integrity and privacy issues affecting access to the product or application, and protection of the data that the product or system creates or uses. This can include user roles and responsibilities, access rights, user privileges, number of users, descriptions, etc
CLIENT IMPLEMENTATION REQUIREMENTS
Client Implementation requirements identify specific impacts on the client during implementation. This can include client workload, work schedule, traveling schedule, or downtime.
DATA CONVERSION AND CLEANSING REQUIREMENTS
Date Conversion requirements identify the specific requirements pertaining to data conversion and cleaning. This can include the migration of employee data from the current system to the future system, Data masking, Data sanitization, etc.
AVAILABILITY REQUIREMENTS
Availability requirements identify a measurement of the planned uptime during which the system is actually available for use and fully operational. These requirements should be documented in terms of application and required availability. This can include hours of availability, critical time frames, maintenance windows, etc.
FLEXIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
Requirements that measure the ease of adding new functionality to the product or system. These are the requirements that help make a product or system expand and adapt to change without having to modify the product or system.
SYSTEM CAPACITY AND SCALABILITY REQUIREMENTS
System capacity and scalability requirements identify the expected load on the system, how many users are likely to access the system concurrently, system usage, and the system attributes. They can include the average number of concurrent users, maximum number of concurrent users, average number of transactions processed per day, maximum number of transactions processed per day, etc.
PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS
Performance requirements identify what the product and/or system must do efficiently. This can address response time, maximum duration to execute a task, upload time, download time, how many transactions can be processed the one time, and how many users the product or system can handle.
ROBUSTNESS REQUIREMENTS
Robustness requirements identify the degree to which the product continues to function properly when confronted with invalid inputs, defects in connected software and hardware components, or unexpected operating conditions. One example is the ability of the solution to recover all changes made in the file up to ten minutes prior to a system failure.
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS
The information management requirements are meant to ensure that systems have the ability to delete records at the end of their lifecycle in compliance with the Management of Information Act or other legislation. These are standard Information requirements that are required for all systems.
If you remember some of these different types of requirements the next time you meet with stakeholders, it may help you elicit new requirements.