Requirements: Lost in Translation

Chi-Pong Wong is a seasoned supply chain strategist, program manager, service center manager and relations manager. He has published on leading online magazines and other popular journals. He earned a MA in Economics at SUNY Stony Brook and a MS in Computer Science at Duke University. He can be reached at Linkedin and [email protected].

  Requirements Management  

Flawed requirements are a primary reason for project failure. PMI reported in its 2014 Pulse of the Profession Study that 37 percent of organizations alleged inaccurate requirements as a primary reason for project failures. Similar investigations have revealed the same theory over previous years; one such notable study was the 2011 Strategies for Project Recovery by PM Solutions. It proclaimed that requirement issues were the No. 1 top reason for troubled projects.

Why Do So Many Projects Address the Wrong Requirements?
Why do such a large percentage of projects deliver against incorrect requirements? It’s because there are at least four groups of stakeholders involved in four transliterations before market requirements are turned stepwise into project plans. Hence the chance is high that a problem could arise somewhere in the process; even worse, any inexactness could be amplified through subsequent rendition phases, further misconstruing the requirements.

Additionally, part-way requirement changes reacting to market fluctuations when the translation process is in full motion can also cause decoupling effects if the flow was not built to accept requirement changes midway through the process.

A Requirement Transliteration Process is Complicated and Error Prone
Here is a typical requirement transcription operation:

1. Customers, directly or …

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