As previously discussed, poor requirements engineering has been the dominant cause of project failures across the six year history of the Planit Testing Index. In 2012, it became more problematic causing 68% of project failures, up 9% from 2011.

The majority of respondents remain concerned about the quality of their requirements, with just 28 percent of respondents feeling positive about their requirements definition. This comes as no surprise considering the role requirements play in project failure.

Planit Testing Index 2012: Rating Your Requirements Definition

The industries who were most critical of their requirements were Government, Health and Telecoms, each of whom had around a third of respondents consider their requirements to be poor. Bucking the trend, over 40% of Software Development / IT companies considered their requirements to be of good standard.

Planit Testing Index 2012: Benefits Expected From Improving Requirements

The negative opinion of project requirements is reinforced by the 97 percent of respondents who conceded that they can benefit from improving their requirements, including 67 percent who rated their requirements as significantly sub-par.

These results actually represent improvements in all facets compared with 2011, when a third of respondents considered their requirements as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ and 73 percent could imagine significant gains to their project requirements.