Requirements Constraints

Requirements constraints are usually global requirements. Because they are restrictions, they help to determine which subset of requirements can be included in the eventual product. Constraints affect decisions about the scope of the product: Perhaps they limit the amount of time or money that may be spent on the project, or perhaps they are pre-ordained design decisions that limit the way the problem is solved. You can think of constraints as a special type of requirement that provides some guidance on where to focus your requirements-gathering efforts. Your management, your marketing colleagues, or your client probably already knows the constraints. The task at blastoff time is to elicit and record these limitations.

Section 4, Mandated Constraints, of the Volere Requirements Specification Template provides a complete description of how you record constraints. You can find the template in appendix B.