> I very seldom ran into people who could articulate what they needed
The people with the needs and ideas are often so divorced from the "how" that they don't even bother trying to nail down the details. I think in their mind they are delegating that to the specialists.
This question of who writes the requirements is so ubiquitous you would think we'd have better solutions for it. I know some people solve it with processes like BDD but personally I think we'd be better off if we just had clearer role definitions.
For example, in a waterfall project the requirements usually land in the lap of the Business Analyst. Well when you look at Business Analyst roles you see they are expected to do a lot more than documenting requirements, so it's viewed as acceptable when they are somewhat bad at it. They also spend most of their time with the business so they are unaware of the limitations of the team who is expected to implement the changes.
For another example look at Scrum. It talks a lot about good requirements in the form of user stories, but it stops short of assigning this responsibility to any one of the formal roles, presumably making it a team activity or expecting it to be organic.
When we want someone to write code we hire a programmer, and writing code is what they are expected to do. Where is the role that is strictly requirements and nothing else? Considering how often I hear complaints about bad requirements, it seems overdue that we establish one.
The people with the needs and ideas are often so divorced from the "how" that they don't even bother trying to nail down the details. I think in their mind they are delegating that to the specialists.
This question of who writes the requirements is so ubiquitous you would think we'd have better solutions for it. I know some people solve it with processes like BDD but personally I think we'd be better off if we just had clearer role definitions.
For example, in a waterfall project the requirements usually land in the lap of the Business Analyst. Well when you look at Business Analyst roles you see they are expected to do a lot more than documenting requirements, so it's viewed as acceptable when they are somewhat bad at it. They also spend most of their time with the business so they are unaware of the limitations of the team who is expected to implement the changes.
For another example look at Scrum. It talks a lot about good requirements in the form of user stories, but it stops short of assigning this responsibility to any one of the formal roles, presumably making it a team activity or expecting it to be organic.
When we want someone to write code we hire a programmer, and writing code is what they are expected to do. Where is the role that is strictly requirements and nothing else? Considering how often I hear complaints about bad requirements, it seems overdue that we establish one.