Requirement ambiguity and fuzziness in large-scale projects: The problem and potential solutions

In large-scale projects, it often occurs that the product the purchaser ends up receiving – possibly from projects extending over many years – differs from what they expected. The provider usually defends its delivered product and may blame the imprecision and ambiguity of the requirements, defined by the purchaser, as the primary reason for misinterpretation of requirements and resulting deficiencies. This letter relies on game theory to explain this problem including both intentional and unintentional misinterpretation of requirements. The letter also highlights the practical and scientific significance of the problem using two real-world cases and suggests potential tools and techniques from soft computing in order to develop decision support systems to address the problem.