Writing requirements is one of the core competencies for anyone in an organization responsible for defining future Information Technology (IT) applications. However, nearly every independently executed root-cause analysis of IT project problems and failures in the past half-century have identified “misunderstood or incomplete requirements” as the primary cause. This has made writing requirements the bane of many projects.

This lecture discusses the difficulties that plague IT requirements. It presents:

• Avoid Ambiguity in Your Requirements
• Ambiguity Kills Projects
• Who Needs to Understand Your Requirements?
• Roadblocks to Effective Communication