Ignoring The Requirements, Watching The Discussion

recycle

Almost a month ago, we published an article titled Broken Requirements Ecosystem. That article built on a discussion thread at Seilevel. Since that time, the original thread has grown, and a new one has been spawned at the Catalyze site.

In short, the question was asked on the Seilevel forum- why are specs sometimes ignored by developers, and four possible reasons were suggested. We followed up with our view, and the discussion picked up again, this time at Catalyze.

    1. Original discussion thread on Seilevel’s forum: Reasons Reqs Go Unread (Discussion from 19 Jun to 26 Jun )
    2. Article at Tyner Blain: Broken Requirements Ecosystem (Written on 21 Jun, Discussion to 26 Jun)
    3. Thread spawned on the Catalyze forum: Broken Requirements Ecosystem (Discussion from 23 Jun to 15 Jul)
      Note – the dates above for each article/forum-post are as of right now. People have submitted 23 comments across the articles, showing a lot of good insight from many different perspectives. Developers, product managers, project managers, stakeholders – lots of great comments!

      Even if you read our article before, go back and follow the discussions again – starting with Seilevel’s article, and progressing to ours, following up with the conversation at Catalyze.

      • Scott Sehlhorst

        Scott Sehlhorst is a product management and strategy consultant with over 30 years of experience in engineering, software development, and business. Scott founded Tyner Blain in 2005 to focus on helping companies, teams, and product managers build better products. Follow him on LinkedIn, and connect to see how Scott can help your organization.

2 thoughts on “Ignoring The Requirements, Watching The Discussion

  1. You’re definitely right! The discussion threads here were more trying to understand the root cause of the problem (specs not being followed), but you’re definitely right – it is collaboration.

    If a spec is to be useful, it should represent what the team agrees on and understands – not a fiat passed down from on high. Regardless, it is the people on the team that make things happen, and if people aren’t doing what you expect (and rely on them to do), you need to work with them to correct your mistakes and theirs.

    Collaboration.

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