Requirements Management

I attended a briefing this week of requirements management in preparation for a proposal kickoff. There were several sources used for the materials along with some "killer" bullet points:

• Customers stated requirements are never the real requirements
• Technical development is often started too soon
• Failure to control new requirements and changes to requirements leads to loss of control
• Established criteria of a good requirement is needed for program success
• Prioritize the requirements early and often
• Requirements errors run in the 41% to 56% of the errors in a program
• Cost of rework is typically 45% of the project cost
• Investment in a System Life Cycle Requirements Process at 8% to 14% of project costs yields better results
• An incremental development process helps discover the real needs
• Projects that involve their customer and users have better success

Some of these may sound like agile project management or development process. This was a briefing for a $3.3 Billion (that's 3,300 Million) program.