There’s no question, it’s frustrating to lose time managing change with requirements. In a perfect world, the specifications wouldn’t change, but this isn’t a perfect world.  Requirements change, and often for good reason. The solution isn’t in finding ways to minimize change. The solution is in finding ways to embrace the right changes and keep the entire team in sync with the changes throughout the process. This prevents them from falling into classic traps that lead to frustration, defects, over-runs and scope issues.

So it’s no surprise that according to the 2011 State of Requirements Management Report, of the participants who spend at least half of their time managing changes to requirements, a whopping 25% admitted that less than 20% of their project or product launches were delivered on-time and on-budget. Successful product launches were much more likely for participants who spend less than 10% of their time managing change, as more than 23% had a success rate of greater than 80%.

In December 2010, Jama Software partnered with Ravenflow to conduct an industry-wide survey including over 800 participants about the challenges, trends & successes in requirements management today. For more information about today’s world of RM, download a copy of the 2011 Report or attend the Trends & Technologies Webinar on February 10th.