Proceedings of AIS SIGSAND European symposium on systems analysis and design: Practice and research

Requirements management provides the basis for systems development. Literature posits that projects fail for the same reasons as 30 years ago citing poor requirements determination as a causal factor. Although literature offers diverse materials proposing various approaches to requirements management this paper presents a perspective gained through an empirical setting. It offers ‘rich insight’ into difficulties experienced within a large, complex bureaucratic project arena that adopted a JAD approach. Theory states that cultural constraints inherent within organizations impact upon requirements determination. Although this case study research holds this premise to be true, the findings build on this theory by determining the issues behind these barriers that suggest some implications for practice. Hence it provides meaningful insight for other similar development contexts within comparable bureaucratic settings. Indeed Fitzgerald (2000) suggests that it is the case that practice should inform theory and this is another of the paper’s contributions.