National Weather Service Requirements Process

The National Weather Service has completed its efforts to develop a process for validating and prioritizing requirements. This process, described in the National Weather Service Requirements Generation Process Policy, establishes the policy and processes for the generation, approval, and prioritization of requirements for the National Weather Service. This policy provides for the identification of requirements at the local, regional, and national levels, sets conditions for requirements approval at each level and alignment within the annual budget cycle. It provides for requirements definition; documentation of mission needs; traceability to an authoritative law, plan, or policy; prioritization within the strategic and budgetary plans; and recurring validation during the annual budget formulation.

This process does not supplant or supercede existing organizational change control mechanisms, but rather complements existing tools by establishing an overall process to track, maintain, and validate mission needs and program requirements as well as align their execution with the annual budget formulation process. The requirements generation process is divided into two parts and uses a standardized Operational Requirements Document (ORD) for identification, tracking, and evaluation of requirements. This ORD has two parts: Part A - Mission Needs Statement, and Part B - Requirements Analysis and Solution. This paper describes the process, its current state of implementation, and examples of how it has already been used.