Communication / Presentation / Requirements / Requirements gathering

Active Listening and Cultural Cues – When No Means Yes

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Without good communication skills, you won’t understand what the stakeholders want. And you won’t structure and describe the requirements in a way that the developers will implement what you intend.

For a given project, there are three sets of requirements – the requirements you are given, the requirements you document, and the requirements that are interpreted by the delivery team.

Requirements / Software requirements specification / Writing

Stop Wasting Your Time – Don’t Bother Writing Functional Specs

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Don’t do it. Don’t use a functional spec to get superficial agreements and navigate the beurocracy that accompanies large projects. Don’t validate the specification trivially. Don’t deploy with a waterfall process (the spec is done, whew, now – on to design) and never revisit the spec. Don’t work with new developers, or remote developers, or anyone else who doesn’t have the context of direct eyeball-to-eyeball conversations with the customers. Also don’t hire any programmers without complete domain expertise in the customer’s business