A friend and I were talking about requirements a few days ago. We both worked on the same projects a couple of times over the years and what brought the subject up, was the mention of someone we both worked with that always believed that a requirement was something he wanted, not something the needed.
When I was building systems, a requirement described something that was necessary to satisfy a need. An ongoing problem that we always had was that in building something that someone is going to have to use, the user always wants to have “bells and whistles” added to make his (the user’s) job easier. That’s just human nature. The problem with it, in the real world, is that there’s never enough money to provide everything he “thinks” he needs.
It reminds me of a story about Kelly…. when she turned 16 years old, she thought she had to have a car. (Everyone thinks they have to have a car when they become old enough to drive.) At the time, she was going to Paul VI High School and her argument was that she needed a car (if I remember correctly, specifically a Mercedes or Audi) to get to school. Paul VI didn’t have any busses, so I suppose she figured she had a pretty good argument.
Since Kelly was planning on studying engineering in college, I figured this would be a good time to explain “requirements” to her, since they are very important in the engineering field — everything is built to a set of requirements.
I explained to Kelly what was wrong of her argument. She had defined her need to get to school as a “requirement.” In fact, that was exactly correct — her requirement was the need to get from our house to Paul VI. However, Kelly went further, and said she needed a car to get to school.
Here’s the real problem — Kelly, like a lot of people, didn’t really have a requirement, she had a desirement. Her real requirement was to get to school, not to get a car. I could satisfy her requirement with a bus ticket, but not her desirement for a car.
I’m sure Kelly wasn’t very happy with my “lesson,” but life is full of lessons and I’d like to think it helped her become a better engineer.
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