INCOSE Needs and Requirements Manual: Needs, Requirements, Verification, Validation Across the Lifecycle

Complete and comprehensive manual for eliciting, defining, and managing needs and requirements, integration, verification, and validation across the lifecycle

The INCOSE Needs and Requirements Manual presents product development and systems engineering practices, activities, and artifacts from the perspective of needs, requirements, verification, and validation across the system lifecycle. Composed of 16 chapters, this book provides practical guidance to help organizations understand the importance of lifecycle concepts, needs, requirements, verification, and validation activities, enabling them to successfully and effectively implement these activities during product development, systems engineering, and project management.

The parent handbook published by Wiley, INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook, divides the system lifecycle into a series of processes, with each process described in terms of a series of activities. This Manual provides more detail needed by practitioners to successfully implement these activities, with guidance and lessons learned from hundreds of years of collective experience of the authors, contributors, and reviewers. For example, while the Handbook mentions the need to define the problem statement, mission, goals, and objectives for a system, the Manual provides detailed guidance on doing so.

Sample topics covered in the INCOSE Needs and Requirements Manual include:

• Defining the problem, opportunity, or threat and defining a mission statement, goals, objectives, and measures.
• Identifying external and internal stakeholders, eliciting stakeholder needs and requirements, defining drivers and constraints, and assessing risk.
• Performing lifecycle concept analysis and maturation and defining an integrated set of needs that represents the scope of the project.
• Transforming the integrated set of needs into well-formed design input requirements.
• Using attributes to manage needs and requirements across the lifecycle.
• Continuous integration, verification, and validation across the lifecycle.
• Moving between levels of the architecture, flow down and allocation of requirements, and budgeting performance, resource, and quality requirements.
• Defining the system verification and system validation success criteria, method, strategy, and responsible organizations.
• Planning and executing successful system verification and validation programs.
• Managing needs, requirements, verification, and validation across the lifecycle.
• Understanding the importance of an integrated, collaborative project team and effective communication between team members

The INCOSE Needs and Requirements Manual is an essential accompanying reference to the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook for novice and seasoned system engineers, software engineers, project managers, product developers, tool vendors, course developers, educators, trainers, customers, suppliers, non-SE stakeholders , as well as researchers and students studying systems engineering and systems design.

Louis S. Wheatcraft is a Senior Consultant and Managing Member of Wheatland Consulting, LLC and is a long time member of INCOSE and is the current Chair of the INCOSE Requirements Working Group.

Michael J. Ryan is the Director of Capability Associates Pty Ltd. Dr. Ryan recently retired as a Professor at the University of New South Wales and is an INCOSE Fellow.

Tami Edner Katz is a Staff Consultant at BAE Systems, Inc. working as a chief engineer on various space mission projects. Dr. Katz also teaches courses on MBSE and Requirements at the University of Colorado at Boulder.