Project Constituencies

One often overlooked way to check project requirements for completeness is to create a list of potential project constituencies. A project constituent is any person or thing that could influence project requirements either now or some time in the future. Each constituent will tend to look for certain things in any project. Some of these things can be predicted. Some project constituents will often ask for certain categories of requirements. To the extent that you can predict or categorize any potential project constituency, you can create a checklist for the completeness of your project requirements.

There are several ways to discover potential project constituencies. If you know of a similar project, you could research the constituencies of that project. You could rely on your own experience, or you could ask a few standard questions

• Who will use the product we would like to create?
• Who will pay for it?
• Who could be affected by this product? This question becomes very useful if your product could create safety issues. It is also important if a failure of your product could affect somebody's ability to access their money, get to work, buy food, etc.

The table below lists some typical project constituencies and some categories of requirements they often request. The list is not intended to be all inclusive. Constituencies in your environment might have other agenda.

You might wish to consider the possibility that different constituencies might request conflicting requirements. A consideration of project constituencies sometimes will suggest possible actors and possible use cases.