New Study From IAG Consulting Finds Companies With Poor Requirements Spend on Average $2.24m More per Project

NEW CASTLE, DE, Feb 11 (MARKET WIRE) --
IAG Consulting today unveiled the results of its new Business Analysis
Benchmark Report, which surveyed over 100 North American companies to determine
the importance of business requirements on enterprise success with
technology projects. The survey found that poor requirements and lack of
business analysis capabilities are costing companies millions of dollars per
project when they pursue larger, strategic projects that add new functionality
to
the organization. The report highlights several major findings, including:

-- Companies with poor requirements, on average, spend $2.24 million more
per project on strategic projects than those that employ requirements best
practices.
-- Companies with poor requirements and business analysis capability have
three project failures for every one project success.
-- Only 32% of companies employ practices that make the likelihood of
project success "Probable." The remaining 68% enter every project with an
"Improbable" likelihood of success, even before they begin the project.
-- Over 40% of the IT development budget for software, staff and external
professional services will be consumed by poor requirements at the average
company using average analysts. This requirements premium is avoided by
organizations that consistently use best practices in business requirements
when completing projects.

Business Requirements Key to Success

The importance of requirements to project success has been an emerging hot
topic in today's IT organizations. People understand that getting requirements
right is important to project success. However, the study found that while
people understand this issue, businesses did not take effective action in
almost 70% of the strategic projects surveyed. The research found that
companies that focus on both the process and the deliverables of requirements
are far more successful than those that only focus on the documentation
quality.

"The use of a poor requirements process can be debilitating to an
enterprise," said Keith Ellis, author of the study and Vice President at IAG
Consulting. "Organizations understand conceptually that requirements are
important,
but most do not internalize this understanding and change their behavior as a
result. The most successful companies do not view requirements as a document,
they view it as a process of requirements discovery. Only companies that focus
on
both the process and the deliverables are consistently successful at changing
project success rates."

Best Practices Bring Hope

Almost 70% of companies surveyed set themselves up for both failure and
significantly higher cost in their use of poor requirements practices. While
there
is no single silver bullet for making organizational improvement, the full
report
outlines a number of strategies that organizations can undertake in the area
of requirements definition and management. Companies with mature requirements
capabilities should achieve 80% success rates for the projects they undertake.

For more information, or a copy of the full study, please visit www.iag.biz.

About IAG Consulting

IAG Consulting is the leading international business and software
requirements
definition and management consultancy. IAG is known for its Requirements
Discovery Process(TM) and the Best Requirements Practices(TM) employed on their
consulting engagements. IAG's core competency is Requirements Definition and
they are best known for their service of facilitating short one-week
Requirements Discovery Sessions and producing clear and accurate Business and
Software Specifications. IAG's main offices are in New Castle, Delaware and
Toronto, Ontario.

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