This Requirements Set Framework™ developed by SBDi is an extension of the work of John Zachman (www.zifa.com).

The Requirements Set Framework works in conjunction with Requirements Patterns and Anti-Patterns to help you organize all of your requirements while minimizing gaps in knowledge, participation and process.

Following is an example of the detail that goes into structuring a requirement. Requirements are broken down into three dimensions that include:

Community - Represents the business area the requirement supports.

Perspective - Represents the evolutionary detail of the requirement.

Focus - Represents the specialized view or architectural component of the requirement.

The business Community is broken down into four sub-categories made up of:

• Business Practice (product development, marketing, customer services, logistics)
• Business Support (legal, human resources, finance)
• Business Organization (executive management, board of directors)
• Technology (hardware, software, network)

Perspective evolves from detail requirements, which are noted at the Requirement Set stage. Different perspectives include:

• Planner (clarifies the scope of investigation)
• Owner (requirements and dependencies)
• Designer (essential details of the requirements)
• Builder (requirements to support development)
• Subcontractor (requirements that pertain to monitoring for product improvement opportunities)

The Focus dimension incorporates specialized views that must be captured to build effective software solutions. Not unlike a news reporter gathering facts, the focus must address:

• Who (captures the people organizations and systems, including customers, suppliers and internal organizations of the corporation involved in the product)
• What (captures the information that is important to the business and the individual business communities)
• Where (captures the locations in which the business operates and identifies the underlying network structure)
• When (captures the events that require action on part of the organization)
• Why (captures the policies that define the corporate culture and strategy of the organization)
• How (captures the functions and their workflow that support the events)

Two other categories of the Focus dimension include:

• Product Constraints (captures expectations of the organization and customer)
• Project Constraints (defines the limitations of resources during project execution)