Scope uncertainty is a principal reason why IT projects far too often end up costing more than anticipated, generating products that don t exactly reflect what senior management originally had in mind. The risks can be considerable. The problem is requirements definition. Senior management may have a sound, and profound conceptual understanding of what it wants. The IT team may be highly proficient.
Failure occurs in bridging business concepts, technical planning and development.
Sometimes no one is all that clear on just what is trying to be achieved. In such cases, all parties struggle to convert a mix of needs, wants, ideas and options into a workable tool or utility, often under the guns of business expediency and other pressures. These pressures may be so great that the team leaps into development before sufficient time has been spent on the necessary preliminaries. The problem may be compounded when technical novices push their IS department to deliver before the business homework is done. We need to know globally, conceptually and tactically just what it is we are dealing with here.