The Business Analysis Benchmark is an annual research study conducted by IAG Consulting that looks at the impact of Requirements Definition and Management quality on various aspects of corporate performance.

In 2008, the study quantified the impact of requirements quality on large scale, strategic projects.  Its findings showed significant financial costs and excessive failure rates associated with poor requirements quality.

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The 2009 study broadens the research to focus on the relationship of an organization’s requirements discovery and management maturity on overall application development productivity and organizational competitiveness. This year's report, titled "The Path to Success", presents detailed findings on the impact of maturity and provides a detailed analysis of the optimal path for improving requirements maturity.  

More About the Study

This year, IAG took a more comprehensive look at the elements that define requirements definition and management maturity using IAG’s Requirements Maturity Model (RMM). The Requirements Maturity Model is a framework to benchmark and manage an organization’s effectiveness in requirements definition and management by looking at the level of maturity in six different capabilities (processes followed, techniques used, staff competency, technologies employed, deliverables and results produced, and organizational support.)

The 2009 BA Benchmark, in analyzing performance of organizations with varying levels of maturity in these critical elements of requirements and business analysis maturity, found:

1. Requirements maturity improvement is highly correlated with improvement in development effectiveness.

2. Requirements maturity cannot be changed through continuous focus on only one underlying capability.

3. High requirements maturity companies can be found amongst the followers of many different development and project management approaches such as Agile, Iterative, Planned, and Prototyping/Visualization centric methods.

The Business Analysis Benchmark report provides a variety of current statistics on the overall maturity of the industry with respect to business analysis and requirements as well as key findings for leaders, managers, champions and practitioners to take actions to improve this aspect of the project application lifecycle as well as overall business and project performance, and application or product quality. 

The report is organized along the lines of readership group – discussing the key findings as they relate to:

1. The CEO: how does requirements maturity impact overall organizational competitiveness?

2. The CIO: how does IT Leadership approach the major issues in making requirements definition and management change?

3. The Project Management & Analyst Leadership: what is the effectiveness of various paths of change, and what are the required activities to bring improvement?