In software development there are well-documented statistics about catching defects early in a project and how much cheaper "earlier" is than "later". While I have not found similar statistics on managing risks early in projects, the same is certainly true.

As many as half of project failures are attributed to requirements defects. I look particularly at poorly defined or ill-managed requirements as risks that can be cured early in a project. If not resolved, they can unpredictably delay a project during final testing.

Requirements management is time consuming and sometimes erroneously feels like it is in the way of "real work". The criticality of software support for requirements management grows geometrically with the size of the team and the number of requirements.

For small teams, an orderly approach to documentation of requirements based on Microsoft Word might be all that is needed. The recording mechanism is not as important as the team spending time to insure that their requirements are complete, clear and customer-centric.

For large or complex projects, a more formal approach is needed. A good source of information on robust requirements management can be found at http://www.telelogic.com/products/doorsers/. Telelogic provides software products for requirements management.

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