What a week. I feel like I have been involved in battles every day for the last week or so fighting over the process of how to spec out a development project for a business application. This should be simple, we have been doing this same thing for years, it just shouldn't be that complicated. But it is! Here are my thoughts:

Early in the project the business analyst (BA) builds a list of requirements based on project documentation. The BA is responsible for managing that list making sure that the requirements are properly organized and clear. The BA is also responsible for making sure that list is complete. All of design documentation (Detailed Functional Specifications, Information Requirements, Security Matrix, UI Models, DB Models, BO Models, Detailed Technical Specifications, etc.) should reference in some way this original set of requirements. Each requirement should be marked clearly as in scope or out of scope and should include any comments regarding discussions, decisions made, who was involved and dates things happened. If at any time there is a change to the requirements, the business and the design teams should be notified.

I'll write more later...