Requirements and design

All the links below are to our WordPress blog.

Key concepts

Client requirements are a notorious problem in many fields. There’s a widespread view that the problem is due to clients not making their mind up, or being disorganised. The real reasons run deeper; fortunately, there are effective methods for fixing the problem, which are not as widely known as they should be.

• Why requirements are difficult, in one diagram
• Why clients change their minds, and what you can do about it
• Requirements that clients don’t talk about
• Are client requirements infinite and unknowable?
• Why clients can’t know what they don’t know

Solutions 

The posts below describe ways of clarifying client requirements within a systematic overall process.

• Identifying and clarifying client requirements
• More on identifying and clarifying client requirements
• How not to handle client requirements
• More examples of how not to handle client requirements
• How to tell if you’ve met a client’s goals
• Why clients change their minds, and how to fix the problem
• Finding constraints and boundaries in requirements
• Requirements that clients don’t talk about

Methods 

These posts describe methods that are useful for identifying requirements rigorously and systematically, with particular reference to requirements that clients are likely to miss.

• Using observation to identify requirements
• More on using observation to identify requirements
• Structured Observation of the Environment for requirements
• Assessing usability with timelines and task analysis