Organizations are increasingly becoming aware that business requirements are the primary vehicles for ensuring the success of their information technology initiatives. Many IT projects have their success or failure rooted in the clarity, completeness and suitability of their business requirements. In spite of this, many organizations choose to either not specify the requirements or make do with sketchy requirements when undertaking strategic information technology projects.
One of the reasons for this state of affairs is a lack of awareness. Whereas programming tools are widely available and used universally, it is all too common for requirements to be written using a plain word processor. Although the word processor has the advantage of simplicity, requirements captured using a word processor cannot be easily analyzed, discussed, collaboratively refined or costed. The consequences are that when there are changes in requirements, the changes do not propagate to all affected personnel. Often, organizations altogether neglect to document changes to requirements once the first set of requirements is documented.
In order to manage requirements more effectively, organizations
should consider using a requirements capture tool. However, using a requirements capture tool introduces several costs:
|
