The problems most companies have with software development are due to poor requirements rather than coding.  Developers know how to code but the business requirements are most often incomplete and don’t effectively communicate the business needs.  The lack of effective requirements gathering and writing leads to 82% of the software re-design and maintenance efforts causing companies to waste millions of dollars a year on ineffective software implementations and lost product to market opportunities.  These statistics are based on studies done by James Martin a leading methodologist.

An important aspect of the iterative development approach is the Joint Application Development (JAD) process.  JAD is used as a technique for developing business system requirements.  The purpose of JAD is to bring together IT and the business community in a structured workshop setting to extract consensus based system requirements.  This is accomplished by using a trained JAD facilitator and customized, planned agendas to assist the participants in arriving at complete, high quality requirements.  Experience has shown that the JAD process substantially reduces development time, costs and errors. 

JAD is typically used in the early stages of a project life cycle. Pierson Requirements Group, Inc provides training and mentoring and shows how a project can be supported through Joint Application Development workshops.

Agile/Iterative development methodology includes JAD techniques for determining user requirements. These requirements are reflected in a set of products that are produced using Object Oriented Analysis and Design.  Pierson provides training for Agile Requirements Gathering & Iteration Planning and JAD Facilitation & Requirements Gathering Training Seminar using Use Cases.  Both these classes provide techniques that can be used by your project teams to achieve consensus-based requirements.