Darryl.net

Following on the previous post, I just gave a guest lecture at Haas on requirements gathering. Here’s the presentation on product requirements gathering. It’s lacking some of the necessary verbal context - mainly that there are so many standard processes around requirements gathering that people miss the basic premise…

You have an idea, you gather as much information as possible from as many stakeholders as possible, then you convey the idea to others.

Often, during requirements gathering (building giant “product requirements documents” or “feature lists”), you forget what it is you set out to do. Because of this, you don’t know what you’re explaining to other people - so your team is not sure what to build. Then you launch something that doesn’t really meet any of your stakeholders objectives.

I’ve learned this both the hard way and the good way: set a vision, keep it simple, and be ruthless in cutting out everything that doesn’t meet that vision.