Software Engineering

8.1.3 
Solicit stakeholder needs and expectations
Understanding customer needs and expectations is central to developing a solu-
tion that will be acceptable when delivered. History is wrought with flawed soft-
ware development programs that were delivered late, exceeded program cost 
constraints, or were rejected by the customer when the system was finally deliv-
ered. Requirements creep—the continual changing and addition of requirements—
is a major dilemma confronting programs. Software development managers fail to 
restrain the customer from attempting to continually change or add requirements 
throughout development. It must be recognized that each requirement implies an 
expense to the development effort, including driving up test costs and impacting the 
delivery schedule.
Fundamentally, customers do not have requirements, they have needs and 
expectations. When faced with the cost associated with a new requirement, cus-
tomers will often change their stated needs or drop the requirement altogether. 
The greatest challenge a software development manager will face is establishing 

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