The Internal Revenue Service’s business systems modernization effort has suffered delays and cost overruns due to inadequate development and management of requirements, the Government Accountability Office has said.
It said that while the agency has created a Requirements Management Office to establish policies and procedures for managing requirements, that BSM does not yet have adequate policies and procedures in place to guide its systems modernization projects in developing and managing requirements.
Since completion of the policies and procedures is not expected until March 2007, it is critical that BSM immediately implement draft policies developed in January and continue to develop the final policies addressing requirements development and management, according to GAO-06-310.
It said the three projects it reviewed did not consistently follow disciplined practices for systems development and management because of the lack of policies and procedures.
All three projects had a change management process that requires approvals and impact assessments to be completed when there are changes to requirements, but none met all of
the practices needed for effective requirements management, the report said.
It said two projects did not have a clear, consistent way to gather requirements, two did not have fully documented requirements, and two could not produce fully traceable requirements, which is another key element of managing
requirements.
Unless the agency develops and institutionalizes disciplined requirements to develop and manage processes and implements draft policies in the interim to cover key areas of requirements development and management, it will continue to face risks, including cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls, according to GAO.
