Oladimeji Olaolroun         M00285370         CCM 2426

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Vs. Requirements Analysis

Introduction

Organisations use development methods when developing a product or a service, to help them deliver the product/service efficiently and also to help them keep cost of production to a minimum. There are quite a few development methods depending on what the project is, these methods are available for companies to use to increase their productivity. The development methods I will be examining in this essay are Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Requirements Analysis.

Quality Function Deployment is a method used in production which is aimed at meeting the needs of the customer whilst maintaining quality throughout the production phase.Requirements Analysis is a method which is used in software development to understand what the customer’s needs and expectations are from a proposed computer system.

Requirements Analysis

Requirements analysis, also called requirements engineering, is the process of determining user expectations for a new or modified product. These features, called requirements, must be quantifiable, relevant and detailed. Requirements analysis is an important aspect of project management. After user requirements are captured in the form of interviews, research, questionnaire and surveys, the requirements are analysed, modelled and are documented usually by a Requirements Analyst before the stage of designing the proposed computer system begins.

(Source; System requirements analysis By Jeffrey O. Grady)

The process of Requirements Analysis is important to a software project because if there is not enough attention given to this process, the system may not deliver on what it was expected to do. It would also be a waste of money and resources to spend money on a system that does not meet the requirements of an organisation. The initial steps of the Requirements Analysis are to define a high level view of how the proposed system meets the business functionality requirements. The stake holders of the system are taken into account at this stage to assess how they will be affected by it. Use Cases, Class Diagrams, Data Flow Diagrams, Prototypes are a few of tools used to illustrate and better analyse user requirements;

Join now!

Once the user requirements are analysed and well understood, they are documented to help design the system. It is important that the user requirements and the scope of the system are communicated properly to a team is technical and also to the end user. Problems can be identified and are easier to fix at this early stage which also reduces costs later if there were problems identified at a later stage.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured approach to defining customer needs or requirements and translating them into specific plans to produce products to meet ...

This is a preview of the whole essay