The Importance of Software Requirements Engineering in IT Projects

Have you ever felt helpless when you open an issue in Jira, and there's just a single ambiguous phrase instead of a clear logic’s description? And yes, how many hours of technical debt have you accumulated trying to implement a feature that suddenly changed mid-sprint? You can hire the best Senior developers in the world. You can ensure 100% code test coverage and build a perfect CI/CD system. But the project will still fail, and deadlines will be missed – just because your team is plagued by miscommunication that stems not from syntax, but from poorly designed requirements.

That's where requirements engineering comes in. It's not about bureaucracy, but about building correct business logic before it devolves into difficult-to-edit and cumbersome code.

Understanding Requirements Engineering

So, let's go from definitions and basic concepts to specific recommendations.

Defining requirements engineering

What is requirement engineering? In a nutshell, it’s the discipline of extracting, analyzing, and documenting the conditions a software product must meet. More precisely, according to the ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 standard, it’s an iterative process that ensures the project team builds the system correctly and, more importantly, this system is correct.

We perceive this discipline as the creation of a technical contract between all team members. Without it, every line of code will be a potential bug in the future, meaning the cost of late-stage architectural changes will grow exponentially as well.

Importance of the requirements process

Requirement engineering in software engineering is a tool that ensures that the product is delivered exactly as the client envisioned and as its target audience expects. Indeed, research confirms that 60-80% of IT project failures are due to requirements flaws. And yes, this eliminates pain for all parties:

• For developers, clear requirements eliminate guesswork and reduce reworks, meaning code written once hits the mark;
• For project managers, clear requirements help avoid scope creep and provide arguments in dialogue with the client as to why "this small feature" takes weeks of work;
• For clients themselves, identifying a requirements conflict during the discussion phase costs hundreds of times less than fixing the same conflict at the production stage.

Core components of system requirements

To ensure predictable system behavior, we categorize requirements into levels that are understandable to both business and technical specialists:

• Business requirements. These are the high-level goals of the product, such as why it's being created at all. Defining these requirements helps developers understand the project context.
• User requirements. These are specific interaction scenarios that describe what the user wants to achieve.
• Functional requirements. This is a clear list of what the system should do, including what the input is, how this input is processed, and what the system should deliver to the user as a result.
• Non-functional requirements. This is a priority for architects and defines requirements for performance, scalability, security, and fault tolerance.

Key Phases in Requirements Engineering

Now, let's move on to considering the phases of requirements engineering.

Elicitation techniques

Elicitation is the stage where the PM and analyst work like psychoanalysts, not only listening to the client's desired end result but also analyzing their business processes. The following techniques are often helpful here:

• Interviews and workshops – conducted in a direct dialogue with stakeholders.
• Prototyping – involves creating basic prototypes that enable the least resource-intensive yet clear visualization of functionality.
• Observation – analyzes how users interact with competitive solutions, allowing the technical team to eliminate technically unfeasible ideas before they reach the backlog.

Documentation and specification

The result of the above actions is a software requirements specification, a document that serves as a single source of truth for investors and developers. Generally, a good specification always meets quality criteria: it’s verifiable, consistent, and comprehensive. For clients, this is a legal and technical guarantee that their expectations will align with reality.

Validation and verification

Finally, requirements verification follows. It makes sense to divide into two separate concepts:

• Verification – involves determining whether the technical team has compiled the document correctly and whether it complies with technical standards.
• Validation – implies finding out whether the product meets the client's vision and whether its functionality solves specific business problems.

This approach allows development teams to ensure that the final product will both work as expected and deliver a return on investment ASAP.

Best Practices for Effective Requirements Engineering

In this paragraph, we’d like to consider some software requirement engineering practices we use.

Engaging stakeholders in software project requirements

In our experience, we engage stakeholders (both senior management and end users) at the early stages. This eliminates the risk of creating a product "in a vacuum" that will be ineffective or not usable at all in real-world workflows. Overall, this approach allows us to guarantee high user loyalty and a rapid return on investment for our clients.

Utilizing engineering best practices

We use traceability when each business requirement is connected with a specific software module. This way, if you decide to change the process logic in the future, we’ll be able to quickly determine which parts of the system will be affected and how much it will cost. As for specific techniques, we typically use visual modeling – for example, creating UML diagrams or visual maps using BPMN 2.0. This helps our clients and us understand how complex processes will work from the very beginning.

Incorporating business analysis methods

Integrating business analysis methods like SWOT and value stream analysis makes it possible to prioritize development using the MVP method (although it's important to note that this approach isn't applicable to all products). This allows our clients to profit from key features while the rest of the system is under development.

Tools and Techniques for Requirements Engineering

Now, let’s consider specific tools and techniques we use during the requirement process.

Popular requirements management tools

Any requirement, technical or otherwise, shouldn't be standalone – it must be linked to a Git commit, a test case, and a sprint issue. To achieve this, we build a single source of truth using Jira and Confluence. This allows functional specifications to be directly linked to developers' tasks, excluding work with outdated versions.

For systems with sophisticated architectures, we use CASE tools like Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems or visualization plugins like draw.io and Miro – they enable design data flows and UML diagrams. Also, these tools help the team to automatically generate test coverage reports, which is crucial for meeting deadlines and quality standards.

Techniques for accurate requirements gathering

The accuracy of requirements gathering determines how stable the product architecture will be. In our experience, we almost always go beyond simple interviews and use more detailed input gathering methods, such as:

• Low- and high-fidelity prototyping – creating interactive prototypes in Figma allows the PM to agree on the product logic with the client, and developers to determine the final frontend complexity and user interactions before the first line of code is written.
• User stories and Gherkin (used in behavior-driven development) – we describe requirements through user stories, while for critical features, we rely on Gherkin syntax based on the Given-When-Then template.

Speaking of our case studies, let's consider the Roken project, an online job platform combining two interconnected solutions, a job-listing website and a CRM system. Before its development, we had to analyze how candidates search and apply, how employers evaluate and communicate, and how career consultants operate internally. This prompted us to expand the design and prototyping phases, which ultimately led us to complete rethinking of the UX, filter types, homepage structure, and engagement prompts. Therefore, we’ve created a product that not only fully met the client's expectations but also delivered outstanding business metrics within the first few months of launch:

• 182% surge in clients;
• 1000% share growth;
• 900% jump in interviews.

Project Management Strategies for Requirements Process

Finally, we propose you consider several strategies that optimize the requirements engineering process.

Overcoming common challenges

The main challenge for a PM is technical debt arising from gaps in requirements, which is why this specialist must take on the role of a "filter" between chaotic ideas and the tech team. We prevent scope creep by introducing a culture of clear Definition of Ready criteria. This means that a task doesn't move to development until the requirement is defined to a level that eliminates ambiguity.

Addressing ambiguous requirements

If a developer sees the phrase "scalable solution" in a task, this carries the risk of building an architecture that is excessive for the client's current business goals. That's why PMs must translate subjective clients’ wishes into measurable technical metrics using SMART criteria, decomposing complex requirements into strictly time- and complexity-bound tasks whose execution quality can be assessed with a simple checklist.

For example, in a project for Harley-Davidson, we were tasked with integrating the spirit of this legendary brand and its premium service standards into a CRM system. To avoid ambiguity, the CheIT team transformed abstract requests such as "customers want clarity, emotion, and speed; sales reps want tools that reduce manual work; while the brand itself wants a scalable system adaptable to new markets" into specific technical parameters. This approach allowed us to create a product that perfectly matches the brand's image and is also an effective, measurable tool for sales growth, as confirmed by specific figures – 16 salons started using the platform in the first month after its launch.

Managing changing requirements

We integrate change management into Agile processes, where each sprint begins with a review of backlog priorities with clients. This allows their businesses to adapt to market changes right during the development process – meaning, if competitors release a new feature tomorrow, the team will be able to adjust the development course without disrupting the system architecture.

Ensuring consistent communication

Since most IT failures are due to poor communication between stakeholders and the team, we build a transparent system where each party is a full participant in the process, regardless of their technical savvy. To achieve this, we use regular demo sessions, status reports, and shared communication channels in Slack/Microsoft Teams. We also create a unified glossary for terminology. All this ensures our clients are always aware of the project's status, its risks, and how we mitigate them.