This paper is focused on requirements engineering, cornerstone of a software development process, and aims to discuss the need of requirements engineering in software development process. First is paid attention to international standards and to the general need of requirements engineering. The evaluation of costs in development process caused by fixing requirements errors is also included. The reader is acquainted with the commonly used requirements methods and models. Nowadays there are different approaches to software development process. The movements of approaches are discussed in detail. The aim of this paper is to discuss the need of requirements engineering in case of different approaches. Mentioned are four basic approaches – predictive, iterative, adaptive and enterprise-scale adaptive processes. This paper tries to find the answer to the question whether the knowledge of requirements engineering is always needed, mainly in case of adaptive approaches to software development.