Calculating the ROI

Again, there is no question that a requirements management tool is very useful; but can it pay for itself at your company? The ROI model presented here provides specific improvements you might expect from installing a requirements management tool, and then tries to quantify the benefits from that perspective. The model is loosely based on one originally developed for a company of about 500 R&D staff rolling out a commercially available product; the ROI assessment was done about 1.5 years into the rollout.

Keep in mind that the costs and savings presented here are just examples and not meant as an indication of what such an effort would cost or save your company. The main point of this chapter is to describe how to go about building an ROI model for your company, not to analyze the results of a particular case study.