A paper-based system is cumbersome and difficult to manage. Much time can be taken up by highly skilled staff in an effort to keep track of changes in specifications and their impact on other aspects of the design.
Diverse stakeholders may hold conflicting views on the product's functionality. These conflicts must be noted and resolved. Requirements need to be prioritised according to their importance and their review status recorded.
To facilitate validation, tests for each stated requirement should be defined. In safety critical sectors, hazard analysis must be performed and mitigating requirements introduced. Rationales for decisions must be recorded and accessible to the whole development team.
All these features and many others must be managed. To realise a return on investment we recommend the use of requirements management software.
Failure to use requirements information management has been cited as the primary reason why development projects using software fail.