Factors affecting completion of the requirements capture stage of projects with different characteristics

In the light of certain important gaps observed in the management of the requirements capture and analysis (RCA) process, a study was conducted to investigate the presence of significant differences between projects developed by different people and organisations. This paper presents the results of a survey of 107 projects developed from 74 different organisations, in which an attempt is made to identify the relationship between developers, project characteristics and different aspects of the RCA process. The results suggest that projects with different characteristics not only complete the RCA process performing a different number of iterations, but also allocate their resources in different ways. It is also suggested that these differences might occur due to differences in the level of some important factors (concerning team members' and users' attitude and project management) between projects with different characteristics. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.