10 Requirements Traps to Avoid

The path to quality software begins with excellent requirements. Slighting the processes of requirements development and management is a common cause of software project frustration and failure. This article describes ten common traps that software projects can encounter if team members and customers don’t take requirements seriously. I describe several symptoms that might indicate when you’re falling victim to each trap, and I offer several solutions to control the problem.

Be aware, though, that none of these solutions will work if you’re dealing with unreasonable people who are convinced that writing requirements is time-wasting bureaucratic overhead. To persuade such skeptics, present data such as that from the Standish Group’s CHAOS report (http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~beau/PM/Standish-Report.html)—a study of 8,380 IT projects which found that more than half were "challenged," with reduced functionality being delivered over-budget and beyond the estimated schedule. The top three contributing factors on challenged projects were lack of user input (12.8% of projects), incomplete requirements and specifications (12.3%), and changing requirements and specifications (11.8%).

Author: Karl Wiegers