Misusing the word Requirements

The more I think about the word #requirements the more I think it is and has been misused for decades, by myself included.

Imagine I have a bunch of nuts, I don’t know what size the nuts are which means I don’t know what size spanner I need. I could write a BABOK format Requirement that explains that “The solution shall have a spanner that loosens a nut easily” but no one can build anything from it because we don’t actually know what size spanner to build. We don’t need a requirement. We need more information.

How about a hypothesis instead? I believe that if I test a range of spanners on the nuts I will find the right size, I will know when I am successful as the nut will be turned by the spanner without slipping. Now this tells me what I need to do and how I know I will have found an answer. Let’s imagine the result is that we discover we need a 10mm spanner for our 10mm nut.

Now I can write a requirement that says The solution shall provide a 10mm spanner that can turn a 10mm nut continuously until it is undone.

Why do we keep using Requirements to specifiy things that are unknown, undecided or vague. Use hypothesis statements instead

#businessanalysis #agilecoach #scientificmethod #productdiscovery