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Is your project on the road to failure?

Lately I've been cogitating on the importance of clear requirements in software development. 

When can we, the product managers and business analysts of the world, handover requirements to begin development?  At what point are they thorough, yet concise enough to give a developer the right level of information to create what has been cooped up in someone's brain? 

It reminds me of the classic tree swing cartoon where each party has a completely different result.  It highlights the challenge with multiple parties responsible for interpretation (as proposed by the project sponsor, as specified in the request, as designed by the systems analyst, as coded by he developers, as deployed into production.... ultimately not meeting what the user actually wanted in the first place!) 

Sadly, this happens all the time.  "No single factor is responsible for more wasted effort, rework, or failed projects than inadequate requirements," stated Carl Zetie of Forrester Research in a January 2006 research report. "For many companies, improving the communication of requirements between IT and business managers -- both gathering the requirements from the business and confirming understanding to the business -- is the single improvement with the biggest measurable impact."

So how can Alliance ensure your project is not on the road to failure?  A key testing activity is to vet requirements early in the project lifecycle to ensure they are clear, complete and unambiguous. The Ambiguity Testing Technique (testing requirements) is implemented at the inception phase and during the requirements gathering phase of the project. Take a read through our white paper and let me know if you have any questions/comments.