We need the requirements!

Tom Breur

20 December 2015

“We need the requirements!” Somehow, when I hear that cry, I cringe. Something doesn’t sit quite right with me, when I hear a “call” for requirements. I guess I am so deeply sold to having conversations with my business partners (“customers”), that I find it difficult to relate to anonymous specifications, arriving on a piece of paper.

Over the years, I have kept learning some lessons over and over. Often the hard way. Even seemingly simple requests, can prove quite a bit more daunting once you get down to the nitty gritty detail. From the outside, it always, always looks more simple than it is.

Yet some people seem to expect that “the requirements” provide an answer to these “details” buried deep inside the problem domain. But in my experience, even if these requirements were unambiguous, along the way you’ll want to nurture a dialogue. Either to ask for feedback, or for clarification.

Somewhere along the way decisions need to be made. Preferably quick. “That ‘other department’ should decide!” But departments don’t make decisions, people do. And I have consistently found professional relations (although camaraderie can certainly be involved) to be the bedrock for greasing the wheels of communication.

Instead of waiting for requirements, you might also walk over to your customer, invite him for a beer, and find out what is really going on in his world. Because no good “story” ever begins with a salad J