The majority of business analysts don’t have the tools which would help them work more effectively. We’ve identified some problems which we can solve by developing a requirements management tool. You could help us make it more useful to you by providing input and feedback.

The state of affairs in requirements management is rather ironic. One of the major goals of business analysts is improving productivity. However, the majority of business analysts themselves are doing their work with tools which can be quite detrimental to their own productivity.

Let’s look at the numbers. According to a survey we conducted, the average rating business analysts give their tools is 5 out of 10. 74% of the respondents rated their tools at less than 7 out of 10.

What are the major problems business analysts are facing with regards to requirements management? Here is what our surveys showed:

  • Finding incorrect or missing links between requirements
  • Getting project stats (requirements status and counts, project progress per phase etc.)
  • Seeing the impact of a requirement change on other requirements and use cases
  • Duplication of requirements between different documents
The average rating business analysts give their tools is 5 out of 10. 74% of the respondents rated their tools at less than 7 out of 10

When we consider that less than a third of business analysts are using specialised requirements management tools, it becomes clear that these problems could be mitigated through better software. The majority of analysts today use Word and Excel, which are simply not meant to keep track of requirements in a way that would solve these issues.

The requirements aren’t just text, they are highly structured information. They have dependencies and references. Changing one requirement can trigger a chain of changes to other requirements. They can be grouped by components, or phases. They can depend on a body of rules for legal compliance, and so on.

We would like to see an online application which takes this into account and allow business analysts to work effectively, without the tedious work of updating links by hand or duplicating requirements between various documents. We also think that a requirements management tool should handle more than just software development projects. The fact that everything is online will make it easier for distributed teams and means there is no need to involve the IT department.