Defining all the important requirements up front can reduce total system development expenses by as much as a factor of 10.  There are many studies that show it often takes $10 to change a requirement once implementation has started as opposed to the $1 it would have taken to get the requirement right the first time.

Regardless, requirements do change -- especially in today's fast changing technology environment.

Requirements can be categorized into many times:  functional, performance, design (constraints), text, etc.

What the system is intended to do, who will it help and the specifics of how it must work are the most important for small projects.

  
Last modified: December 08, 2002