REAL Requirements

Robin F. Goldsmith gets (registration required) it. Sorting through the maze of so-called business requirements, system requirements, functional specifications, and software requirements, he counsels us about what the REAL requirements are:

REAL requirements are business requirements, which are in business terms and are what must be delivered to provide value.

He then remarks that what many in the requirements community call "system", "software", or "product" requirements are in fact design:

System requirements represent a human-defined product or system which presumably is one of the possible ways presumably how to accomplish the presumed REAL business requirements. As such, system requirements actually are a form of high-level design.

Finally, Goldsmith tells us that failing to recognize that so-called system/software/product requirements are in fact design has practical negative consequences:

The primary reason products/systems don’t satisfy the REAL business requirements is because the REAL business requirements have not been defined adequately. In turn, the primary reason the REAL business requirements are not defined adequately is because conventional requirements models mislead people into believing that system requirements are the requirements and thus warrant all the attention.

Confusion over requirements concepts is not just a semantic or academic issue. Goldsmith recognizes that product development organizations are losing sight of what a product really must do and be to create value.

Comments

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos...

5 Ways Companies Make Product Decisions

In the last blog entry, we reviewed the four problems that companies face, or are trying to overcome, as they make product decisions . Now we'll look at the ways that most companies make their product decisions. Companies that develop, market, and sell products and solutions make strategic and ongoing tactical decisions. They decide what features to include in their products, what messages they will use to communicate the value of their products, what marketing tactics they will use, what prospective customers they will target, and many day-to-day choices. Whether or not these decisions are deliberate or ad hoc, most companies use some combination of the following ways of making product decisions. (A downloadable "map" that summarizes the product decision landscape is included at the end of this article.) Customer Wants Product decisions based on feature requests, focus groups, and what prospects and customers say they want. Companies are selling products to ...

Is Customer Development Pseudoscience?

The “Science” of Lean Startup Lean startup practitioners embrace the scientific method, seeking the "truth" about what business model and strategy will lead to product success. We do so by: Formulating hypotheses Crafting and running experiments to test them Learning from the experiments Iteratively feeding our learnings back into revised hypotheses Sounds pretty scientific, at least in spirit, doesn't it? Yet this process actually neglects a key ingredient in the scientists' mode of operation. To identify what’s missing, let’s examine “customer development”. Customer Development Steve Blank is one of the pioneers of the lean startup movement. He introduced into the lean startup lexicon the term “customer development”. Customer development consists of sessions and interactions with customers to test hypotheses. For example, a product manager might interview a prospect, asking if she agrees with the product manager’s hypotheses about the problems she faces or the ...

Cauvin

Search This Blog