Project teams often struggle with how much time to spend on requirements. I was reading the book “Just Enough Requirements Management” by Alan Davis and liked what he had to say.
“Documenting requirements is a lot like purchasing insurance. If you do not buy enough, you can end up with disastrous consequences. If you buy too much, you can waste vast quantities of money. If you do not pay enough attention to requirements, you endanger the project’s success by introducing too much risk. If you pay too much attention to requirements, you overburden the project and raise the likelihood of being late and over-budget.”
While this is vague - I think it makes sense for the team should spend enough time on requirements to reduce the risk for the project to an acceptable level - then continue revisiting the requirements through the duration of the project as the team uncovers additional information.
One Comment
Interesting. I would love to hear what you guys think are the best practices from the industry on requirements — maybe the lightweight to heavyweight scale of requirements management and where you guys tend to find yourself.