RIP Requirements. Long Live Requirements!

Monday, February 8, 2010 |

Judging from recent musings on eliminating requirements in the world of LEAN, it appears that even this approach is not immune from bad requirements gathering and definition. LEAN techniques possess few tools to address this challenge - akin to one experiencing a stomach pain without understanding why it's there. Once the environment is optimized, bad requirements simply lead to optimization of bad solutions and related results. Very few actually look at optimizing the process of solution production - that is usually considered overhead - and even those who do still find that balancing optimization and assurance is not a trivial task.

What this underscores is that LEAN is just like other approaches, constrained by the same challenges that cause all projects to fail at a prodigious rate. This is not a surprise to the community that has been analyzing IT failures (Michael Krigsman, Roger Sessions, and myself included.) Our methods may vary and our disagreements may be good fodder, but the underlying problem statement is the same. And unlike individual thought silos, we actually have methods to diagnose why the subject is experiencing that pain in their belly. Would the likely answer include cutting the stomach out if that's where the pain is? Probably not, so eliminating requirements may not be a smart way forward.

AAB

2 comments:

Roger Sessions said...

I can't argue with requirements gathering. The only issue is when it the appropriate time to do so. Of course, I believe that requirements gathering takes second place (and occurs after) complexity has been addressed.

- Roger

Unknown said...

Roger -

That is precisely my viewpoint as well. I think Agile and LEAN practices are absolutely required in certain parts of Development Life Cycle. In my view, capability-based analysis, and our internal method (TIMM) is an effective way to make that happen. Once chaos is organized, it's easy to pick out small pieces and apply Agile practices or processes and apply LEAN. I just think that each of these has to be done in moderation, rather than go overboard.

AAB