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Why do projects fail? More than 50% of the projects have to
stop in between or fail after the execution. Have you analyzed why these
projects fail. Well, one of the reasons of the project failure is the poor Requirement Gathering.
Requirement gathering is one of the most important part of
any project. Requirement gathering, sets up the base for the project. It is the
phase of the project, where the customers’ expectations are understood and an understanding
is built between the customer and project implementation team. This is the
phase from where the rest of the course of the project is set. The customers explain
their current processes and what their pain points are. They also explain what
changes they want in the new system. With the help of these discussions, the implementation
team is able design the new system.
Though this is the idealistic scenario, most of the times
this requirement gathering is not done in a proper manner. Sometimes the
customer is not able to dedicate enough time for the meetings with team, while
most of time they are not able to explain their expectations from the project.
Many times they are not even clear what they want from the future system.
So how does this impact the entire project? When and base or
the foundation of the project is weak, it is surely going to impact the project. So let us look at some of the impacts that the poor requirement
gathering cause to the project.
- The most common impact is the change of the scope of the project again and again. This because, since the requirement gathering was incorrect, the design of the project doesn’t matches the customers expectation, which results in the change of the scope of the project again and again.
- Another impact is, incorrect resource planning. The project managers do the resource planning based on the scope of the project. But if the requirements given by the customer is incorrect, the resource planning will also be incorrect. Hence when the scope of the project keeps on increasing i.e., additional requirements come in between, the allocated resources fall short to manage the work, which results into overburden on the resources.
- Other impact is on the cost of the project. Due to improper requirements gathering, the project planning done, also fails. Hence when the customer doesn’t gives the sing off and demands for the additional requirements to deliver, the duration of the project increases, which naturally impacts the cost of the project.
- If the end product doesn’t match the customer’s expectation (which he was not able to explain during the requirement gathering), sometimes the entire project has to be scrapped. Because the rework cost may be so high, that the vendor has no option but to incur the current loss and scrap the project.
After looking at these impacts of the wrong requirements
gathering, we know how important this phase is for the project. Hence it is
very important to generate a clear understanding with the customer, create a
fixed scope and proceed with the project only then. The customer should agree
that any additional requirement will not be taken or treated as a change request
which will be additional cost to them.
