A business requirements document is a key deliverable of any development effort, and the foundation upon which the final system or software will ultimately be based. Get it wrong, and you'll end up with a product that doesn't meet user needs and costs a lot of time and money to retrofit with the required functionality. Follow these nine steps to help gather the right business requirements from the start.

Gathering Good Requirements Up Front Saves Time and Money

Gathering comprehensive requirements can mean the difference between a project's success and failure. For more information, refer to the ITA research note, "Flawed Requirements Trigger 70% of Project Failures." Projects with any degree of complexity need a formal process to ensure that all of the requirements are accurately gathered, reviewed, documented, and approved so that everyone can understand what software is going to be built.

A requirements document serves the following purposes:

• Documents ideas or thoughts.
• Defines an application, system architecture, or component...