To be successful, projects must be delivered on time and on budget, and they must address the client's needs. This is not a simple task, however, because requirements are likely to change in the course of a project. (In fact, some change is inevitable and even desirable; it means that you and your team are engaging those who have a stake in the project.) By organizing and tracking your requirements and managing the requirement changes, you improve your chances of completing your project on time and on budget and delivering a product that the client still wants.
Studies have shown that a large percentage of projects do not succeed; they exceed their budget, run past their deadlines, or are even abandoned midway. Projects may be completed as specified, but customers may not find them valuable because their needs have changed. In its 2000 report, the Standish Group listed lack of user involvement and changing requirements and specifications as among the top 10 factors that most frequently contribute to project failure.
Other factors that are frequently cited by product managers include the time-sensitive nature of some requirements, difficulty in writing requirements, feature creep (the addition of unplanned changes to product features throughout the development process), failure to coordinate efforts across groups of people, varying sources of requirements, and inability to control or track the number of requirements.
RequisitePro offers an easy-to-use tool to manage changing requirements, thereby increasing your chances of delivering a product that your client wants and doing so in a timely manner.