How to Write Requirements – QRA

The High Cost of Poor Requirements

Three decades of research identified that 70-80% of project defects could be avoided if fixed during the requirements stage. As those requirements continue throughout the development stages, the relative severity at different stages substantially increases.

Sample requirement sets collected from multiple industries average 34 High-Risk requirements per each set of 184 requirements. A requirement that scores as a 1 out of 5 using QVscribe contains at least one Critical Problem or multiple Major Problems and is considered High-Risk. Below we break down the time and cost overruns when 34 High-Risk requirements persist through each stage of the most common development stages.

Time is used as the multiplier to create a per-person-day salary cost. The salary estimate is an average across roles within a given project, with an 8-hour working day assumed.