Before a project starts, it is essential to achieve an agreement of project customers (requesters) and contractors (providers) about what the project is about. An appropriate means is to develop a common Project Overview Statement (POS), which includes:

• Background (problem/opportunity)
• Mission (goal)
• Objectives
• Success criteria
• Assumptions, risks, obstacles
• Annexes (optional).

In IT projects, the state-of-the-art is a more detailed and complex approach than the Project Overview Statement (POS):

The development of IT systems should start with a detailed user requirements analysis. Based on this, the targeted outcome of an IT project will be specified:

• From the customer’s point of view, the requirements specification describes WHAT the targeted system does.
• From the provider’s point of view, the system specification describes HOW the system will do it.

Before you proceed with the following module, please answer the self-test questions for this module, implemented on the e-Learning platform.