Requirements issues continue to be cited as the number one cause of cancelled or over-budget projects. It is accepted across the industry that too little or too much requirements will generally lead to project failure. But determining just how much requirements is enough is a difficult task and one for which there is no exact prescriptive formula.

This White Paper identifies a number of best practice recommendations to enable organisations to successfully develop software solutions that meet the business requirements. Key recommendations are:

• Ensure only those desirable characteristics that can be externally observed are captured as requirements – this ensures they can be tested and verified.
• Regardless of whether you prefer an agile or plan-driven approach to requirements it is essential that you match the process to the project and find the ‘requirements sweet spot’.
• The ‘requirements sweet spot’ is best determined by looking at a number of project factors to find the balance point between the greatest amount of understanding (specificity) and the least amount of ambiguity.
• Use complimentary analytical techniques to validate and verify the requirements and to ensure that all requirements satisfy some need of a potential customer.
• Utilise a ‘just enough’ requirements framework such as that contained in Object Consulting’s Process Mentor methodology.

Click on the PDF Version link below to download this White Paper.