TABLE OF CONTENTS A reasonable vision for requirements engineering is achieving the following goals:
Customers acknowledge that the system meets their expectations.
Systems and software engineers are fulfilled by their work.
Trained and experienced RAs are acknowledged to have made a positive difference.
Task and project requirements are complete and controlled to provide a stable basis for development.
Systems and software development projects incur less than 15% unplanned rework and less than 10% wasted resources.
An informed marketplace is developed, where a potential supplier's ability to define, implement, and support requirements-based development is valued.
Those who are masters in requirements, systems engineering, and project management tasks take personal responsibility for mentoring others.
These goals are achievable. Indeed, there are pockets of excellence where tasks, projects, and even organizations are already achieving these goals. There are organizations, projects, and tasks that perform at high levels of process maturity, as measured by industry standards such as the CMM [1], the CMMI TM [2], and Six Sigma [3]. The SEI provides a Web page (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/sema) that reports on progress being achieved by organizations that use the CMM and CMMI . The industry average, however, is far lower than the high-maturity organizations being tracked by the SEI, as reported by organizations such as the Gartner Group and the Standish Group International.
It is clear that organizations have the capability to perform at higher levels of achievement, as measured by many of the goals provided above. Why don't they? Obviously, the answer to this question is...
