- No formal requirements gathering process is followed.
- The specification resulting from a requirements process is incomplete, inadequate, contradictory, or otherwise seriously flawed.
For decades, development projects have had a high failure rate and a dismal record of delivering the desired solution on time and on budget. A formal systems requirements process is a proven method for addressing these problems.
Building a software system without a good requirements specification is much like trying to build an office tower without a blueprint. If it's a dumb thing for a construction company to attempt, then it's an equally stupid thing for a software development team to take on.
Abivia's Systems Requirements Services include helping development teams learn how to build good requirements specifications, and conducting independent reviews of requirements specifications before implementation begins.
One of the big challenges in developing a good systems requirement is “specification fatigue”. The longer a team works with a complex document, the more likely it is that they overlook serious flaws, or gloss over critical details. The end result is that the team thinks they have a good specification, only to be blind-sided by issues that are discovered late in the development cycle. This can be a serious problem, since the cost of correcting flaws rises dramatically as development progresses.
Abivia's specification review services are designed to help catch flaws before they cause major cost overruns. Our reviews are:
- Objective. As an independent third party, Abivia has no interest in biasing a specification in any particular direction.
- Fresh. By looking at a specification from an outside viewpoint, Abivia is unencumbered by the context and assumptions that may be implicit to the specification team but not properly documented in the actual document.
- Cross-disciplinary. Our broad expertise and experience lets us review a specification from several perspectives
