Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
A Necessary Evil?
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
It’s a familiar story to us all. We work diligently for months, we drive our project teams to achieve super human feats, we solve last minute crises with creativity and a smile and we deliver the final project to our customer on time, on budget and exactly as stated in the approved requirements document. We can’t wait to hear the customer’s reaction, which is of course, ”That’s not what I wanted”.
So what went wrong? Usually the problem is simple; the work in the requirements phase was not rigorous enough to ensure that both the customer and the project team had the same understanding of what was being asked for. It’s easy to blame the customer--they signed off on the requirements, after all. But in reality, the project team has to be held accountable for these problems, and here’s why.
Making the investment in requirements
Too often the requirements phase is seen as a necessary evil--its sole purpose is perceived as being to get a customer sign off so that we can move forward with design and development…or maybe more honestly so that the design and development work that is already underway becomes official.
In reality, the requirements phase is the opportunity to resolve misunderstandings, clarify confusion and reach necessary compromises when they are still cheap. It’s short-sighted to …
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