Prototype to Product

Chapter 11. Writing Requirements That Work

At  the very start of its birthing process, our product is an abstract idea that lives in the heads of one or a few individuals. And that abstract idea is probably focused on the end benefit of the product—on the really cool things it does—rather than the “background” features such as the product’s size, color, and battery life. Those features are less fun to think about and generally assumed to be ideal values: the size is whatever is best, the color is one that people like, the battery life is infinite, and so on.

Some months or years later, a real product is shipped to customers. It has perhaps hundreds of real features. Size, color, and battery life are now real and hopefully they enhance the product rather than hurt it.

Note

Requirements planning is the process of consciously turning our abstract ideas into real product features by way of creating requirements for those features as early as we can in order to minimize surprises down the line.

Requirements are a list of things that some group of people agrees the product must do by the time it is ready to be sold. They typically (but not necessarily) look something like these requirements for the MicroPed activity tracker:

• MicroPed shall have a Bluetooth Smart wireless interface

• MicroPed’s step accuracy shall be within 5% of actual on a flat, paved surface

• MicroPed shall operate for one year or longer on a single battery

Requirements are all about setting common expectations ...