A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks.  You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.

Quality . . . I can’t tell you what it is, but I know when I see it.

There’s a lot of talk about producing high-quality requirements but what does it really mean?  Quality is a standard against which something is measured.  It’s a degree of excellence or the ability to satisfy a need or expectation.

When it comes requirements, people often talk about the characteristics of good requirements.  The most common characteristics mentioned are: complete, concise, correct, clear, testable, traceable, and prioritized.

With user stories, we often talk about INVEST criteria.  INVEST stands for independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable.  There’s some overlap between regular requirements and user stories.

Both are independent.  User stories and requirements should be independent in that you should be able to implement each one without dependencies on others.

Requirements and user stories are valuable.  They generate some kind of desired outcome.

They should both be estimable.  They are well enough understood and small enough to be estimated.  Additionally, both are small. They’re small so as to fit within a single iteration or least be completed quickly.  We want to create things in small increments so that we can use feedback loops to adapt and adjust.

Finally, both requirements and user stories are testable.

Upon reflecting about the characteristics of good requirements, I started thinking about SMART goals.   You may remember SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.  By making a slight change, we get SMART requirements.

In the end, high-quality requirements create a shared understanding. They help us get clarity on steps toward achieving a goal.  You can spend months trying to craft the perfect requirements or you could spend very little time and do a quick and dirty requirement.  Think about your goal.  We need to focus on the outcomes, not just requirements.

Do your requirements lead to the right objectives that help propel your mission and vision forward?

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