In this article I am going to answer the question as to whether or not we need to learn HTML. This rather long answer will surprise you, but hopefully by the article’s end you will understand why. See, this isn’t an easy question to answer and there are many points of view.
First of all, HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a sort of programming language that allows us to view web pages on the Internet. Without HTML everything we read would be simple plain text and very dull to look at. HTML opened up a new world when it was created, one that we sometimes take for granted, not just in the viewing of content online, but in the creation of that content itself.
In the early days of HTML, if you wanted to design a web page, you were pretty much limited to notepad and your imagination. There were no HTML editors. You went to school, learned the language and then plodded your way through coding it. It was tedious to say the least and not many were really good at it.
The first HTML editor was Nexus, which was actually an editor-browser. It was written by Tim-Berners Lee in Object C. It was primitive by today’s standards but at least it made it so that you didn’t have to type in HTML code by yourself from scratch.
As the years went by, many editors have come and gone. The most popular today are Front Page, a Microsoft product, and Dreamweaver, written by Macromedia. Both products are excellent. Both have their good and bad points and both pretty much do EVERYTHING for you as far as HTML coding.
So then why bother to learn HTML? One very compelling reason and the only one you need.
Because editors are NOT perfect and CAN’T do everything. They make mistakes. They add in unnecessary code. They crash and the list of annoying things goes on and on. The bottom line is this. You are going to run into a situation where the editor you are using does NOT give you the results you’re looking for. Then what do you do?
If you don’t know HTML you have 2 options. Live with what the editor gives you or go find somebody who does know HTML and hope he doesn’t charge an arm and a leg for fixing your code.
Or, there is a third option.
Learn it!
You will kiss the ground a million times over for doing this. The table on your web page that isn’t exactly lined the way you want. You can go in and tweak the width, height and alignment settings. That href tag that isn’t the right URL. You can go in and fix it without screwing up your code to the point where your link points to nowhere at all. Trust me when I say this. The time you spend learning HTML, which can be a little daunting I admit, will save you TONS of heartache when designing your next web page with that fancy editor that seems to have a mind of it’s own. In my next article I’m going to cover some HTML tips that will make your life a lot easier when designing web pages.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to HTML
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PowerPoint is a strong program with a plethora of useful and special features. It is also almost expected from a presenter — but, unfortunately, often with dread. I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t use PowerPoint. Just remember it is a tool, and only a tool. Used properly, it is your friend. Yes, visuals are important and can add an extra and memorable element to your presentations when used with planning, thought and care.
Start by deciding what purpose your use of PowerPoint serves. Below are some considerations for using and/or not using this slick program:

You feel you should use the program. My advice is to avoid using PowerPoint for this reason. Many people who travel this route, end up with a program that falls flat, because they are obviously not comfortable presenting this way.

You love all of the bells and whistles.

You have so much information to impart, you feel that this is a way to get it all up in front of your audience. This approach doesn’t work well either, because the slides get overloaded with words that many can’t see, and the presenter’s approach often ends up with him or her just reading from the slides.

By now, you are wondering when and if to ever use PowerPoint. Yes, use it as a powerful visual tool. I suggest creating short, punchy slides with few words, striking (but not distracting) graphics, and large, easy to read fonts. These slides will serve as an outline for your presentation and move you along at a fast and ordered pace. When you show meaningful graphs that explain, and graphics that make your main points memorable, you have succeeded.

Remember, you are the presenter, your PowerPoint program isn’t. It should be your friend and partner — a trusted and useful assistant. The following tips will help you create a PowerPoint presentation that enhances – and doesn’t detract – from you as the speaker:

Slides with a dark background and light lettering are easier to read in most lighting conditions.

Sans-serif fonts are easier to read from a distance.

Use shadows behind the fonts and graphics to make them more prominent.

KISS! Keep it simple, silly! As you prepare your presentation, repeat this over and over to yourself, so you are not tempted by all of the extras.

And always have a backup plan in case the projector and/or your program doesn’t work. If you are going to use PowerPoint slides, have the program on a separate disk, just in case, and always try to arrive and set up early to make sure that everything is working the way you want it to. If you know that there will be Internet access, it doesn’t hurt to have your slides up on a site, in case you need to access them that way.

Remember, use PowerPoint for power, not distraction.

Chris King is a professional speaker, storyteller, writer, website creator / designer, free agent, and fitness instructor. You will find her powerful presentations website at http://www.powerfulpresentations.net and her business website at http://www.creativekeys.biz.
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Why is an extranet better than email for sharing documents? The answer is simple: email is perfect for one-to-one communication, but not ideally suited for groups engaged in project collaboration.
Most e-mail programs provide little – if any – effective way to prioritize your messages and attachments. Everything arrives in the same place, in the order in which it was sent.
With an extranet, all project related documents are automatically captured within a folder dedicated to a project.
Not mixed in with the latest joke circulating around the office.
In addition, an extranet can handle any size document. With e-mail, you run the risk of large attachments not passing through the company firewall.
Sharing a power point presentation with a group is a perfect example. With email, you have to break the presentations into small parts, with each section attached to a separate email. The sections don’t arrive at the same time, and it can be quite confusing for everyone involved. Imagine sharing three presentations, each in 3 parts, to six people. That would be nine emails to six people. Fifty-four messages!
Using an extranet, the presentations can be sent at the same time, all intact, automatically filed into a single project folder along with all the other related materials.
And everyone has access at the same time.
Many extranets make it even easier, using automatic email alerts that inform the recipients that the presentations are available, and providing a comment function that allows each user to share their point-of-view.
An extranet assures that important documents get to the right place, ready for instant response. And it puts related documents and messages together. The budget, schedule, strategic plan, power point presentation, everyone’s notes and comments — they all appear on the same page. No sorting through a long list of unrelated emails.
One final point. Many extranets are secured with 128 bit encryption, the same protection used for protecting financial transactions. Email, on the other hand, can land in anybody’s hands, which is OK if you’re sending the latest joke, but not at all funny when it comes to the confidentiality of your most important documents.

Rick Mosenkis is the President and CEO of Trichys, the creators of WorkZone
hosted intranet and
extranet software.
With customers around the world, among large and small companies,
Trichys develops easy-to-use web-based software that allows
non-technical business professionals to leverage the power of the
Internet without IT support.
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The next fundamental programming tip I can offer you is naming your variables appropriately. I find that a majority of logic or compile errors are caused by a misuse of variable names.

Here are some examples of bad naming conventions:
1. dim newvalue as Integer
2. int x = 0;
3. JLabel label1 = new JLabel();

Laid out here, it is pretty easy to recognize what each variable does, but in a simple program of at least 500 code lines it can prove rather difficult to track these variables.

Here are some suggestions.

In the first case, think about what “newvalue” represents. We know it is an integer but what is it used for? If it is a counter for a while loop, then how about doing this instead,
dim iCount as Integer
It is quite clear that this variable is of type interger and will be used as a counter.
The second example is sort of the same situation. A lot of the times one letter variables are declared in C++ and Java, for mathmatical algorithm or for loop statements. In those cases I feel it is perfectly good coding structure to use these variables as is. If this variable was to refer to a randomly produced interger used in a lottery machine, then the use of x as that variable name proves quite ambiguous.
In the third case JLabel label1 = new JLabel(); in this case, you should be more descriptive as to what label1 points to, either what sort of information is produced from this label, or where it is located.
If this label was created as the title of a program, then I would call it JLabel lblTitle = new JLabel();
If the label refered to a name of a person I would declare it as JLabel lblName = new JLabel();

Pretty straight forward, and these little tips will definitly help you efficently test your code.

Hungarian Notation
A few quick tips on composing your variables.
Hungarian notation is one of the most common format styles.
iNum = an integer value
dNum = a decimal value
sName = a string value
btnSubmit = a button used to submit
lblStudentAverage = a label
as Shown above, use the first initial of your variable to represent what data type it is. here are a few other examples
obj -> Object
arr -> Array
txt -> Text Box
cbx -> Combo Box

Graham McCarthy, has 6 years experiance developing software for both educational and business oriented purposes.
Website: http://concisecoding.blogspot.com/
Certification:
- A College Diploma in Computer Programming Analysis from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario Canada.
- A University Degree in Information Technology /w Honours from York University in Toronto, Ontario Canada.
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I’ve spent the past couple of days learning a new computer language, PHP. I’m currently in the process of developing an online management system, and after a careful anaylsis PHP seemed to be the right language to develop with.
So I have been going through some tutorials and looking at lots of coding examples. As a pretty experianced programmer, I am still having a hard time understanding some code developed by other people.
Which leads me to the first tip in this series.
The following coding tip is very straight forward, but ESSENTIAL to keeping you effective in the Information Technology Industry, especially when working in a team enviroment
1. Comment your code:
If anyone is going to be reviewing your code at any point in time, you should always leave appropriate commets to help guide them. Here is how I structure my commenting, lets use JAVA for this example
/////////////////////////////////////////
// Title of Program Author’s Name
// Date of creation
//
//Breif description of the program
/////////////////////////////////////////

public class TestClass
{
//Variables
protected int iCounter;
//Here is where you would list all your global variables

//Methods List all the methods after this for good programing structure

////////////////////
// main(String args [])
// Do: What is the main function of this method
// Input: What is brought into the method
// Returns: What the method returns
public static void main(String args[])
{
//
}//End main Method–> Keep track of your end braces with a small comment
}// EndTestClass

Commenting while you are developing does not take a lot of time, and it will definitly pay off for you later, especially when you try to review some complex code.

Graham McCarthy, has 6 years experiance developing software for both educational and business oriented purposes.
Website: http://concisecoding.blogspot.com/
Certification:
- A College Diploma in Computer Programming Analysis from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario Canada.
- A University Degree in Information Technology /w Honours from York University in Toronto, Ontario Canada.
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Patch management often presents conflicting demands on IT organizations charged with ensuring system security while optimizing system reliability and integrity. Because the time between discovering a system vulnerability and the emergence of an attack is declining, IT organizations are under pressure to apply patches before adequate testing, and without system downtime. A sound patch management strategy is a critical part of any secure enterprise.
Baseline the Environment:
Developing any patch management plan begins with a firm understanding of the current enterprise. Data must be gathered on the configuration of every server, workstation, and network component in the system. Such data is necessary when evaluating the risk and therefore the necessity of particular patches.
This baselining may be performed as part of a larger configuration management and risk assessment effort. Although data may be gathered manually, automated tools exist which will do the same work while also keeping the data current. Vulnerability scans can be used to discover services that should be removed or disabled.
Once data is gathered, machines should be brought to the same benchmark security risk level. For servers, an assessment must also be made of their criticality to the enterprise. Change control documents and procedures should be developed, particularly if server hardware and operating system maintenance is performed by one group while software application maintenance is performed by another.
Identify, Evaluate, and Plan:
Keeping current with system updates and patches can be overwhelming. Not only are there often many, but decisions about which are critical, which are merely useful, and which are unnecessary or even potentially harmful, must be made quickly.
Automated tools can make the identification and evaluation stage easier by monitoring the current patch status of the server or workstation (or scanning it on demand) and comparing the status with the ideal configuration for the system, producing recommendations for patch installation.
Perform Test Deployment:
Before deploying patches to the wider enterprise, deployment should be conducted in a test environment that mirrors the production environment. At a minimum the environment should represent all critical applications, and ideally, all enterprise platforms. If replication of the production hardware is not possible, at least patch compatibility with operating systems and applications should be tested. Test deployment should begin with the least critical servers first.
Deploy and Report:
New tools for patch distribution can greatly simplify deployment. Tools such as the Microsoft Systems Update Services audit the enterprise, download patches from a central database, and manage their installation. They may also analyze dependencies and provide rollback features. Patches can be advertised, downloaded, and installed by clients according to security settings determined by a group security policy. Such solutions exist for Windows as well as UNIX/LINUX systems; cross-platform patch management solutions are also available for heterogeneous enterprises. Enterprises without these tools can use login scripts or place patches on intranet sites for users to install themselves. Patching of mission-critical servers should be done manually during off-peak hours in case recovery is necessary.

Jonathan Coupal is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of ITX Corp. Mr. Coupal manages both the day-to-day and strategic operations of the Technology Integration Practice Group. Among Mr. Coupal’s greatest strengths are evaluating customers’ unique problems, developing innovative, cost effective solutions and providing a “best practice” implementation methodology. Mr. Coupal’s extensive knowledge and experience enables him to fully analyze client systems to recommend the most effective technologies and solutions that will both optimize their business processes and fulfill immediate and future goals. Mr. Coupal and his team build a high level of trust with clients, establishing ITX as their IT partner of choice.
Mr. Coupal holds certifications with Microsoft and CompTia, including MCSE, MCSA, Security+, Linux+ and i-Net+, and served as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the development of the CompTia Linux+.
About ITX Corp:
ITX Corp is a business consulting and technology solutions firm focused in nine practice areas including Business Performance, Internet Marketing, IT Staffing, IT Solution Strategies and Implementation, Technical Services, Internet Services, and Technology Research. To learn more about what ITX can do for you visit our website at http://www.itx.net or contact us at (800) 600-7785.
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Now days you might have take notice of a threatening word “Spyware”. Spyware software is becoming annoyance for the companies. Spyware is likely to be verified as a great damager to the companies. It is not so noticeable like spam and virus assaults to the systems. Spyware could be destructive and cause financial losses.
Spyware, it is almost an invisible software programs that collects and transmits personal or company’s important data through the Internet without being noticed. The transferred data could be used for smashing up your company’s credit or might hard hit its profits. Spyware is also commonly acknowledged as Adware, Malware, Sneakware and Snoopware
Entrance ways: Spyware could enter your network by auto-download software that automatically downloaded to your network, even without user’s acknowledgement. It could also enter with software, which is downloaded by user that includes Spyware program. Most common entry of this software is pop-ups, which appears while opening any site. The pop-ups are very attractively designed to allure user to click it.
The Spyware software is not even blocked by firewall programs, as user itself allows it, of-course, due to unawareness. Similarly, the usual antivirus programs are also unable not block it, due to they don’t seem as wicked as viruses.
Safeguard against Spyware: User should completely read and understand the license agreement before downloading any software. Avoid downloading unknown and fallacious software from the internet. Keep away from clicking pop-up that put forward mouthwatering offers.
The constant use of anti-Spyware software: It could prevent entering such harmful programs to your network. The best precautious step is that, a user could apply to block Spyware access via gateway security solutions like the NetApp Internet access and security (IAS) solution, which stops admittance to Web sites offering Spyware.
There are several anti-spyware programs available out there. These programs search and eliminate Spyware and adware. They can detect and sweep off huge number of adware files and modules. Some of these programs also clean program and web-usage path from your network that is very helpful if the system is shared. There also some free downloadable software on authentic sites like www.download.com, www.mcafee.com, www.spywareinfo.com, www.all-internet-security.com, www.tucows.com etc or you can use keyword “free antiSpyware download” in search.
But make sure you do not download or buy any anti-Spyware program without checking its authenticity, at least now onwards.

Allen Brown is a freelance writer for http://www.1888SoftwareDownloads.com , the premier website to find Free Software Downloads including free anti-virus software, free spyware detection software, free toolbars, free chat software and more. He also freelances for http://www.1888FreeOnlineGames.com.
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Business intelligence is the process of gathering information from the business. The gathered business information is transformed into knowledge using business intelligence. Business intelligence will ease the decision making process, helps in understanding the customer taste and market trends. To run the business successfully one should have the comprehensive business knowledge and understanding of our business strengths and weakness. Business intelligence will take into account the internal and external factors of a business.
Business Intelligence Definition
The basic definition of business intelligence “the process of gathering information about a business or industry matter; a broad range of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data that helps to make business decisions.”
Business Intelligence Includes
Business intelligence (BI) includes software applications, technologies and analytical methodologies that perform data analysis. Business intelligence covers data mining, Web mining, text mining, reporting and querying, OLAP, and data visualization.
Knowledge management is part of Business Intelligence
Knowledge management is one of the methods in business intelligence. Knowledge management has been defined as “the technique and tools for capturing, storing, organizing, and making knowledge” Business intelligence is driven by an objective laid by the company. The duration of the objective may be short period or long period.
Business Intelligence Software
Business Intelligence software enables users to integrate and analyze data. Business intelligence software enables us to explore all the business information instantly and effectively. Business intelligence helps the business management to access up-to-date and accurate information about the business performance. Identifying and understanding business opportunities in this vast business environment requires far more than an understanding of technology trends.
OLAP powerful BI Software
The most popular business intelligence tool is OLAP (Online Analytical Processing).
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is a powerful, Business Intelligence & enterprise reporting application for small and medium organizations with the capacity to fully Integrate Enterprise Information.
OLAPBrowser delivers incredible reporting power. Create global and enterprise information delivery systems, executive information Systems and personal analytical application.

Ramki is with Axsellit Technologies (http://www.axsellit.com) Business Software. Axsellit Software delivers professional, benefit-enriched business solutions with an unbeatable performance-to-price ratio. Axsellit Technologies provides Business Intelligence Software (http://www.axsellit.com/business-intelligence.html)
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If you have been using a computer for very long, you are
well aware of Microsoft Office’s big stranglehold on
business productivity software.
After all, what kind of communication, mailing or
other business document ISN’T created by typing in Microsoft
Word, adding and subtracting in Microsoft Excel or
publishing a presentation in Powerpoint?
Microsoft Office has become the de facto standard in office
productivity software (except for some places in the legal
profession, where Corel’s Word Perfect is still considered
standard) all across the world. Most businesses would come
to a screeching halt if their copy of MS Office were to
disappear from their machine.
While a business owner can be extremely productive with
MS Office, that productivity does come at a price. Right
now, that price is hovering around $370.00 for ONE copy of
Office. Not bad if you are a solo entrepreneur, but what
if you have 10-50 employees? $370.00 here and there and
pretty soon you’re talking some real money…
There is a new player on the scene now and it’s called
OpenOffice.org. It is a spinoff from software originally
written by Sun Microsystems and is designed to be a
replacement for MS Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).
What’s the difference between MS Office and Open Office?
Well, one costs $370.00 and one costs $0.00.
Can you guess which is which?
One of the two releases upgrades every few years and
charges you full price for them. The other also releases
upgrades every few years and gives them away.
Which one sounds better to you?
If you are a business owner responsible for outfitting
5-10 or 20 computers with productivity software for
wordprocessing and spreadsheet work, you can’t afford NOT to
take a look at OpenOffice.org for your business.
Apart from the price benefit, here are some other huge
benefits to using Open Office:

PDFs are a cinch. Right now, MS Office can’t turn your
documents into PDFs without the help of third party
software. Perhaps the next upgrade (and YOUR next
$370.00) will provide this functionality, but right now
you’re out of luck. In Open Office, creating a PDF is as
simple as clicking one button.

Your data will NEVER be locked or rendered obsolete,
waiting for you to purchase the next upgrade to software
you’ve already paid for once.

Open Office is available for EVERY type of computer and
operating system under the sun. It comes in flavors for
Windows, Linux, Mac and a whole lot more…

Open Office is OPEN. That means it is customizable by you
for you. If you run a business and need a certain function
to be added, it is as simple as hiring a programmer and
telling them what you want changed. The whole thing is under
your control.

Open Office isn’t going anywhere. Backed by a community
of thousands upon thousands of users and developers, Open
Office is quickly becoming THE standard outside of the US,
where Microsoft’s marketing department seems to dominate
the airwaves.

So what if you own a Mac? How do you get your hands on a
copy of Open Office? Open Office is available for you in a
slightly different flavor called NeoOffice. You can download
it here:
http://www.neooffice.org
And now, the answer to the big question you are probably
asking…
Can I open Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with Open
Office?
YES YOU CAN! With all but a very few exceptions, all
versions of MS Word and Excel and Powerpoint documents will
open without incident in Open Office. If you are in a
highly specialized industry and use a lot of Word macros and
advanced layout features, just do a quick test. Most likely,
things will be fine…
So where do you get Openoffice.org?
The name says it all…
http://www.openoffice.org
Get your copy today!

Jason Leister is owner of Computer Super Guy, LLC, a Chicago based technology
consultancy specializing in helping professional service businesses use technology
to GROW their businessess. He is also publisher of the free eZine, ProfIT, each issue
of which is packed with technology tips for professional service businesses.
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When a Software product has to be developed, one of the first tasks in the Project Manager’s schedule book is Requirements Analysis.
What is Requirements Analysis?
Simply put, Requirements Analysis process aims to identify and document the customer’s requirements for a proposed system.
A trained software practitioner called the Requirements Analyst(RA) communicates with knowledgeable user(s) to understand what the requirements are. Most times, the client will have a brief idea of what they need in the proposed system.
The Analyst’s job is to flesh it out, add implied requirements and mandatory or regulatory requirements the client may not be aware of and create a document called the Software Requirements Specification or SRS.
At the end of the process, the SRS turns out to be the blue print of the product. A reference point for the client, the project manager, the tester and the designer. The SRS should ideally restrict itself to specifying “what” the product should do rather than “how” to do it. Never include implementation details such as database structure, architecture and so on.
What should the Software Requirement Specification include?
Ideally, an SRS should include at the least the following information.
Functional requirements
Functional requirements are the “features” a software has. Example Requirements for a shopping cart are Browse Shop, Detailed product view, checkout, View cart, My Account.
The analyst should also identify requirements that the customer has missed or those that are required to support the main features. These requirements are called Implied Requirements. For example, if the client has asked for a Shopping site, the analyst includes requirements for the Shopping cart such as the View cart, Checkout and Delete from Cart.
Non functional requirements
How efficient is the Software product? Is it high performance, is it reliable, how fast is it, does it consume a lot of system resources. These are aspects dealt with in the non functional requirements. Novice programmers generally fail to address these requirements. These requirements directly affect the quality of the product.
Regulatory requirements
In many industries, there may be regulations within which the software product should comply. For example, the tax laws of the country in which an accounting product has to be deployed. Language preferences, password encryption laws, URL standards, email standards. These are some of the regulatory requirements which the client may not be aware of. The analyst has to include these requirements if applicable to the industry or country in which the software product is to be deployed.
External Interface Requirements
Will this product interact with other software or hardwares? The analyst need to list the minimum requirements of these interfaces.
Acceptance criteria
Finally, the acceptance criteria has to be stated. What criteria will confirm that the software is working as per the client specification. Usually, the tested specifications will be the functional and non-functional requirements stated in the SRS.
It is important that all requirements should include the Feature Number. This improves traceability of each feature throughout the project lifecycle. At the design, construction and at the testing phases, the project members know that they are designing, coding or testing Feature No. FE-2 or FE-45.
Prioritizing Requirements
The SRS should include priorities for each feature. Clients may ask for some features to be completed early on. A carefully Prioritized requirements document leads to quicker development of the more important features.
Isn’t the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) a waste of time. Who benefits?
Thats a fallacy. The SRS is useful to everyone who has anything to do with the project. The project manager knows what to plan for. The designers know what to design. The testers know how the product is expected to work. All with the SRS.
Finally, the SRS helps the customer the most. The customer knows what he will get in the end. Generally, development starts only after the client reads and approves the SRS. For example, if the customer wants the Shopping site system to include a Wishlist, he can quickly scan the SRS and ask for the Wishlist to be added if it is already not there. Increased customer input so early on in the project, helps everyone know what is to be developed and what needs to be developed first.
Review Software Requirements
Getting the requirements right in the first place costs 50 to 200 times less than correcting code. It is important to review the SRS before it goes into the next stage.
Typically, a review session will include at least 3-4 experts and will be held for a maximum of 2 hours per session. The attendees will read the doc prior to attending the meeting. A good review will unearth about 60-90% of the defects in the product.
Some software development companies ignore this crucial meeting leading to disastrous consequences. A simple requirements review will result in a Net Schedule savings of 10-30% . And yes, these inspections are about 20 times as effective as testing the product. It comes as no surprise that each hour spent on review avoids an average of 33 hours of maintenance.
Managing requirements change
No project is static. Requirements may change and a good Project Leader should learn to anticipate that. However, each change in requirements costs time and money, especially if crucial changes come up during Coding or testing and worse if it comes in after development.
The Analyst “has” to try to minimise late changes as far as possible. The best way to do that is to show the customer what he is going to get using small prototypes and the SRS. Customers can easily see what they are going to get and ask for changes much before any development has begun. This way the analyst manages to reduce cost for the customer.
In case changes do occur, during or after coding, the Project leader has to ensure that these changes are controlled. All changes in the specification should be approved by the customer and should be reviewed by team members. All team members should get copies of the latest specification.
Most projects generally experience a 25% change in requirements. Good requirements methodlogies will reduce the No. of changes and cost per change. For example, if the RA could reduce number of changes to 10% and the cost of change by a factor of 5 or 10, the combined effect would be really huge.
Can’t you code without requirements analysis.
You can code without any analysis, design or even testing. This is what most programmers do.
Customers, project leaders and coders generally under-estimate the value of good requirements analysis and give it the go by because a software product “can” be developed without proper requirements, design or testing.
But problems start surfacing in several unrelated incidents.
For instance, tester claim they have completed testing and submit the project to the customer. The customer says “Hey this is not what I wanted. I wanted the shopping cart to be stored in case the shopper decides to complete the ordering process after 2 days?” The tester may not even have known of this requirement, the coder wouldn’t have known, the project leader wouldn’t have known. Finally everyone works overtime to develop this new feature. The coder will claim that it is impossible to develop this feature with the existing design. Then the designer has to twist the design to somehow include the new feature. Will it be optimum design? Well who knows? No one has the time to find that out. Eventually after all that confusion, the customer is given the new feature which is poorly designed and executed.
Is requirements analysis important in smaller projects.
In smaller projects, the same person could analyse, design and code. As the project size increases, all that happens is that the roles are taken over by different people. What is small project? Any project over 2 weeks duration should necessarily include the requirements analysis process.

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