CRANIAL REQUIREMENTS
You’re too busy to sit down with the BA. You’ve blown off the last four scrums. You haven’t returned the PM’s calls. You can never remember how to get on that Wiki thing. Yet you whine, because the Dev team doesn’t build what you want? Developers are hired for their coding chops, not their clairvoyance. Jot it down, friend. When the requirements they must have to start coding are still in your head, what do you expect them to do? Drill a hole in your cranium to pry them free? They can’t do that. But they’ve thought
about it.
OOH LOOK, A SQUIRREL! REQUIREMENTS
Tuesday: You sign off on the prototypes.
Wednesday: You see an awesome video player on your favorite band’s site. You post the band page link to the requirements documentation, saying you want to change your video player to be more like that.
Thursday: You listened to a Jared Spool podcast and realized a 14-step login process to download a whitepaper may confuse the user into thinking they accidentally stumbled into the DMV site. You tell the PM on the way to lunch that you need that login reduced to 6 steps – no, wait, maybe 3. Maybe we need to rethink the login process altogether…
No, maybe you need to settle down and rethink your goals.
LEO TOLSTOY REQUIREMENTS
You keep your requirements in your trunk as ballast for improved traction in the snow. If you shredded them, you’d have enough confetti for a Kardashian wedding. Your requirements are the War and Peace of the project world. Did you really read every page of that book in school? Nah. Neither will the Dev team next week.
FIELD OF DREAMS REQUIREMENTS
“If you build it, they will come.”
“Go the distance.”
“Make a menu-like page.”
“The vibe I’m looking for is sort of, like, Middle Earth meets IKEA.”
“Make it exactly like that other page, only with a database.”
Lean is not synonymous with vague.
“I need a landing page for our promotion that will show alternating product photos from our image library, a couple headlines, and some call-to-action copy areas that link to our standard form.” is lean. “I need somewhere users can go to check out our promos and maybe buy one.” is vague. Go for lean.
p.s. IKEA would never make it in The Shire. Two Words. Round doors.