Metroplex Interactive

When a large project is executed, one of the first steps taken is to document exactly what needs to be performed in order for the project to be completed. The process for capturing these steps is called requirements gathering or business requirements gathering. These requirements are captured from interviews with business managers, operational employees, and other important and relevant departments who are impacted by the project. In large organizations, a requirements gathering template will be used in order to standardize how and what requirements are captured. Special software can assist in requirements gathering to not only capture needs of the customer but also create process flows and process maps based on analysis of the current process. Several requirements gathering techniques exist in informal and formal fashion and can be studied using many commercially available books or online. Once all the requirements are captured they are placed in a requirements document (which is often called a business requirements document or BRD).

The IT industry is especially known for having developed sophisticated techniques for requirements gathering since software development can be extremely detail oriented and tedious.