Series: Part 2 – Logic Mountains & the Avalanche of Must Haves
It’s easy to accumulate undeliverable requirements. These are some ideas on escaping requirement bloat using discovery engagement, deferral, and strategic cutting out areas.
Part 2.0 – Logic mountains & the avalanche of must haves
Requirements gathering makes total sense – especially when you sit in with a group of stakeholders and you talk about what you collectively agree what you need. It all seems very logical in the “heat” of the moment (although many wouldn’t describe requirements meetings as “hot” 😴…). All the bells & whistles make sense. Then
Part 2.1 – Collective Memory is short
So, you’ve just spent three months creating a mountain of requirements, you now have to tip toe around not disturbing the requirements in case there is an avalanche of stakeholder outrage when you say you need to remove a button or change the title of a page. Another three months pass, and you start showing
Part 2.2 – Talk to the user
How else can you reduce the size of the mountain? Let the user’s voice take out some of the options that the team has come up with. It is very easy to spend hours debating one function, but 5 min conversation with 10 users can discard a whole bunch of debated functions. Or even better,
Part 2.3 – Delay, delay, delay
One of the principles of Agile is that you welcome change, and this has a real benefit when looking at trying to reduce the number of requirements. If you want to be flexible, and you want to save time, then every detailed requirement you don’t spend time on initially gives you some time back. It