Concept of Baseline Requirements

 

Concept of Baseline Requirements

OpenRose - Requirements Management

An Open Source and FREE Requirements Management Application / Tool

Direct Link to YouTube Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkIypRys6E

Video Transcript :

Hi, welcome to OpenRose, a free and open-source requirements management application. Get it from https://github.com/openrose.

Today, we are going to talk about baselines and the concepts of baselining. Instead of doing a detailed product demo, we will discuss the theoretical aspects of baselining. I'm going to switch over to Paintbrush—not the best tool for designing, but I like using it for discussion and presentation purposes.

Let's consider that a user has a project, represented by this box. In this project, they have defined several requirements, drawn as lines. These requirements can be nested in a hierarchy or have a flat structure with detailed information defined hierarchically. These requirements are captured as part of the breakdown structure within the product.

At some point, you want to capture a snapshot of those requirements, which have been changing over a given period. We have been capturing information from users, eliciting requirements, enhancing definitions, making them clear and precise, and capturing quality descriptions for each requirement. We did some prioritization, changed statuses, removed those not part of the product, and came up with the final set of requirements. Now, we want to capture all these into a baseline, a copy, a snapshot. After creating the copy, we call it a baseline because it is a reference point.

When we sit down with customers, users, and sponsors, we identify all these requirements as potential deliverables. However, there were specific timelines and budgets, so negotiations took place. The outcome was the removal of certain requirements. For example, we removed these particular requirements. When we remove a parent requirement, the child requirements are also removed because they are not part of the deliverable set.

Let's consider that this finalization of requirements was done in January. In February, new requirements were captured, represented in blue. These new requirements had to be worked upon with a new budget and timeframe. We also wanted to reevaluate the feasibility of delivering the removed January requirements. The customer captures a second snapshot for February. These are durations for taking the snapshot—it could be a project phase, delivery phase, or another defined timeframe.

The customer agreed to deliver the previously removed requirements but decided to remove two new requirements that were not feasible. These two sub-items were part of the new initiative. This is the February snapshot, showing what will be delivered and removed.

Halfway through delivering February's details, the customer encountered unforeseen issues and problems. So, they decided to capture another snapshot of February itself, called February V2. Those three requirements were supposed to be delivered in February, but one proved difficult, so it was also removed. This shows the importance of capturing snapshots from the source itself or from a previous snapshot.

Snapshots or baselining are also required when delivering a large, complex product with several suppliers providing components. Sometimes, a snapshot is needed by item type. For example, in a large requirement set, we consider a subset of item types. We take a snapshot of that item type, move it out to a component supplier, and identify it as a snapshot for January. The supplier starts working on it in January, and is supposed to deliver by the end of January. However, they encounter issues and problems, making them unable to deliver one requirement. This is identified in the baseline, showing that the work could not be completed in January.

We take a snapshot of this snapshot for February. The supplier then works on the remaining requirements. They deliver the outstanding requirement in February. This is the concept of snapshots or baselining, a fundamental feature supported by OpenRose in the requirements management application.

Thank you so much for your time today. Have a great day! Bye-bye.

Document Ref:

https://github.com/OpenRose/OpenRose/wiki/Concept-of-Baselining