The Requirement life cycle takes requirements from their initial conception all the way through to the solution recap. Management of requirements then, is not just the creating and organising of requirements but interfacing with them at every stage of that life cycle.

The basic stages of life for the requirement are

• Business Need
• fully fleshed (adult) requirement
• development ready
• in development
• solution evaluation

At every stage of the life cycle above a business analyst needs to manage the requirements to ensure they are in the optimal state for a requirement. This means that requirements should be interlinked and traceable, maintained and prioritised at all stages of the lifecycle.

As any project or initiative progresses the requirements will go through change it is important to assess these changes not only as they relate to the specific requirements but also all the interlinked system of requirements as a whole.