Thursday, November 13, 2008

Detailed requirements: a never ending story

In an article about selling your IT Projects to Executives the author quotes a former managing director and global CIO:

User requirements, no matter what the development style, must be rigorously developed, detailed and documented.


While I think that it is perfectly true for big companies like Credit Suisse First Boston, where he worked for 18 years, I still am persuaded that it doesn't apply to every situation, though I hope my bank gives very detailed requirements to developers and that they have a very deep QA process in act (I also read from Symantec that banks spend about 10% of their IT budget in security).

But... where's the point of having 600 sheets of paper and 0 lines of code? Surely the requirements eliciting process can provide customers with real breakthroughs and give them a much clearer view of their processes and needs, but it all seems to end with that...

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