Analysts report that as many as 70% of software projects that fail do so because of poor requirements management, making this the single biggest reason for project failure. The main cause of this widespread failure is the gap between

• what the business team wants and how it communicates this, and
• what IT understands and delivers.

No matter how good a project development environment is, if inaccurate or incomplete requirements have been captured in the first place then the project is destined for failure. The same fate awaits project plans that are structured around passive and unmeasurable module definitions rather than measurable business-defined goals. It sounds obvious, but the rate of project failure demonstrates that this is plainly a difficult task.