IT industry research firm The Standish Group noted the three most commonly cited factors that caused software development projects to be "challenged":

• Lack of user input: 13% of all projects
• Incomplete requirements and specifications: 12% of all projects
• Changing requirements and specifications: 12% of all projects

While a variety of other reasons were cited, to include unrealistic schedule or time frame (4%), inadequate staffing or resources (6%) and inadequate technology skills (7%), and other reasons, it's clear that at least one third of development projects run into trouble for reasons that are directly tied to requirements gathering, documentation and management.

These results were also mirrored in a study by the European Software Process Improvement Training Initiative (ESPITI), which noted that the two largest problems, appearing in half the responses of over 3,000 software professionals, were requirements specifications and managing customer requirements.

Compounding this problem is the cost to fix errors in requirements. There is a much larger cost to fixing these errors during testing and maintenance phases of the SDLC, as opposed to finding errors in the requirements stage itself.

What does all this mean? To develop software that meets the needs of customers, that truly address the needs of the users that are intended to benefit from using the application, requirements definition is arguably the most critical piece of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).

Intellect has experts that can drive the requirements definition process. Whether developing internal corporate systems, or commercial software for use by external customers on a large scale, our expertise in business process analysis and product management will uncover true need and features of an application. This allows our clients to deploy applications that are in line with real user requirements.

Intellect will also assist you in developing requirements that are testable. Meaning, the system should be tested to validate that it really does implement the stated requirements.