Gartner has a research report for sale titled Agile Requirements Definition and Management Will Benefit Application Development (report #G00126310 Apr 2005).
Gartner Predictions:
- The cost of quality for developed systems will drop by 30%
- Maintenance costs will drop by 10%
- User satisfaction will go up from ‘fair’ to ‘good’ for medium and large applications
At Tyner Blain they give Gartner a mere 3.5/7 for their analysis!
They:
- agree on the cost of quality
- half agree on the maintenance costs
- don't agree on the user satisfaction
Gartner ties too much of its optimism to the proliferation of RDM systems (they also forecast strong growth in sales of RDM systems). But requirements management software will not solve the problems with bad processes.
I fully agree with that conclusion drawn at Tyner Blain! RDM systems are no silver bullet. On the other hand: you can't get your requirements process right without the support of some tools.
Key point is: you should first focus on getting your software processes right.
Stewart Rogers said
I would take even one point further. Tools will not help you with a bad process and tools will not help collect strong data to write good requirements. However there are tools to help you collect that data (e.g. FeaturePlan).
Nice blog Harry!