Changing Requirements - How to deal with them?
I have not worked on a single project where changing requirements were not an issue. On every project the requirements changed.
Here are some ways that we have found to minimized the impact of requirements change
Isolate the area where change is likely to occurFor example, no matter what the product, the user interface is the area most likely to change.
Make the product configurableIf the product is configurable, it reduces the design task.
Make the design modularIf the design is modular different implementations can be swapped in and out to meet changing requirements. Making a design modular sometimes impacts performance and increases costs. So a modular design has to be balanced against these constraints.
Test for unknowns early
Design in extra capacityFor example, for an electronic control module, we may want to use a slightly higher power processor and have more RAM and storage than we really need. This would allow the design to be modified later to accommodate new requirements.
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