Re: Erik Olson Re: Speaking as the requirements gatherer...
".... in a waterfall-esque environment where requirements documents contained a whole quarter's worth of development, to be delivered two quarters from now, it's impossible to keep the requirements to come in mind while gathering the requirements still needed....." The best PM I ever worked with was an old civil servant, he was strictly waterfall and no other, and he always added a section to the requirements doc he kept secret from the customer - the Wants. This was compiled from right at the start of the analysis phase and consisted of all the "wants" that anyone expressed but which didn't get actually made into firm requirements. Added to this was a good slice of political "likely-to-happens", which was a cynical look at the politics of the customer and associated risks. It was amazing how often his Wants section predicted the customer's (often many) requirements changes, but then one of that PM's skills was an absolutely brilliant way of getting inside the customer's head and understanding their real business drivers, environment and politics and not the bullshine the customer presented to us. Where possible, we dialled in the Wants into the design phase so that we could add them modularly if possible, then when the "unexpected" change in requirements arrived he could hum and haw, charge the customer for a massive redesign (which meant the sales team loved him too), extend the deadlines (so us grunts had extra time for quality control), and proceed with almost no change to the plan. The guy was a genius!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
