DATA WAREHOUSING FUNDAMENTALS: A Comprehensive Guide for IT Professionals

5.5. REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION: SCOPE AND CONTENT

Formal documentation is often neglected in computer system projects. The project team goes through the requirements definition phase. They conduct the interviews and group sessions. They review the existing documentation. They gather enough material to support the next phases in the system development life cycle. But they skip the detailed documentation of the requirements definition.

There are several reasons why you should commit the results of your requirements definition phase. First of all, the requirements definition document is the basis for the next phases. If project team members have to leave the project for any reason at all, the project will not suffer from people walking away with the knowledge they have gathered. The formal documentation will also validate your findings when reviewed with the users.

We will come up with a suggested outline for the formal requirements definition document. Before that, let us look at the types of information this document must contain.

5.5.1. Data Sources

This piece of information is essential in the requirements definition document. Include all the details you have gathered about the source systems. You will be using the source system data in the data warehouse. You will collect the data from these source systems, merge and integrate it, transform the data appropriately, and populate the data warehouse.

Typically, the requirements definition document should include the following information: ...