Several large companies and government agencies said that in recent months they have bought or built tools to automate paper-based or verbal requirements-definition methods. Some businesses are also planning to integrate the requirements management process with the rest of the application development life cycle to improve communication between users and developers.

The urgency to improve requirements management processes has prompted some companies to create new positions within IT departments to oversee such efforts.

For example, about six months ago, Ed Barkley was named to the new post of proc-ess improvement leader in the IT shop of a large health care company he asked not be named.

Barkley's new role: to implement changes that increase end-user satisfaction with new applications developed in-house. His first order of business: to overhaul the development operation's requirements management process.

"In many cases, we are not delivering to the customers what they wanted," said Barkley, noting that developers often wrongly assume that they understand the needs of their users.