| 365 | | 11. Appendix 1 - Feature Attributes |
| 366 | | [Features should be given attributes that can be used to evaluate, track, prioritize, and manage the product items proposed for implementation. All requirement types and attributes should be outlined in the Requirements Management Plan, however you may wish to list and briefly describes the attributes for features that have been chosen. Following subsections represent a set of suggested feature attributes.] |
| 367 | | 11.1 Status |
| 368 | | [Set after negotiation and review by the project management team. Tracks progress during definition of the project baseline.] |
| 369 | | Proposed [Used to describe features that are under discussion but have not yet been reviewed and accepted by the "official channel," such as a working group consisting of representatives from the project team, product management and user or customer community.] |
| 370 | | Approved [Capabilities that are deemed useful and feasible and have been approved for implementation by the official channel. ] |
| 371 | | Incorporated [Features incorporated into the product baseline at a specific point in time.] |
| 372 | | 11.2 Benefit |
| 373 | | [Set by Marketing, the product manager or the business analyst. All requirements are not created equal. Ranking requirements by their relative benefit to the end user opens a dialogue with customers, analysts and members of the development team. Used in managing scope and determining development priority.] |
| 374 | | Critical [Essential features. Failure to implement means the system will not meet customer needs. All critical features must be implemented in the release or the schedule will slip.] |
| 375 | | Important [Features important to the effectiveness and efficiency of the system for most applications. The functionality cannot be easily provided in some other way. Lack of inclusion of an important feature may affect customer or user satisfaction, or even revenue, but release will not be delayed due to lack of any important feature.] |
| 376 | | Useful [Features that are useful in less typical applications, will be used less frequently, or for which reasonably efficient workarounds can be achieved. No significant revenue or customer satisfaction impact can be expected if such an item is not included in a release.] |
| 377 | | |
| 378 | | 11.3 Effort |
| 379 | | [Set by the development team. Because some features require more time and resources than others, estimating the number of team or person-weeks, lines of code required or function points, for example, is the best way to gauge complexity and set expectations of what can and cannot be accomplished in a given time frame. Used in managing scope and determining development priority.] |
| 380 | | 11.4 Risk |
| 381 | | [Set by development team based on the probability the project will experience undesirable events, such as cost overruns, schedule delays or even cancellation. Most project managers find categorizing risks as high, medium, and low sufficient, although finer gradations are possible. Risk can often be assessed indirectly by measuring the uncertainty (range) of the projects teams schedule estimate.] |
| 382 | | 11.5 Stability |
| 383 | | [Set by analyst and development team based on the probability the feature will change or the team’s understanding of the feature will change. Used to help establish development priorities and determine those items for which additional elicitation is the appropriate next action.] |
| 384 | | 11.6 Target Release |
| 385 | | [Records the intended product version in which the feature will first appear. This field can be used to allocate features from a Vision document into a particular baseline release. When combined with the status field, your team can propose, record and discuss various features of the release without committing them to development. Only features whose Status is set to Incorporated and whose Target Release is defined will be implemented. When scope management occurs, the Target Release Version Number can be increased so the item will remain in the Vision document but will be scheduled for a later release.] |
| 386 | | 11.7 Assigned To |
| 387 | | [In many projects, features will be assigned to "feature teams" responsible for further elicitation, writing the software requirements and implementation. This simple pull down list will help everyone on the project team better understand responsibilities.] |
| 388 | | 11.8 Reason |
| 389 | | [This text field is used to track the source of the requested feature. Requirements exist for specific reasons. This field records an explanation or a reference to an explanation. For example, the reference might be to a page and line number of a product requirement specification, or to a minute marker on a video of an important customer interview.] |
