Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Strategic Requirement Writing
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.
The process of writing requirements is critical to the success of a project, but too often the time allocated to requirements is squeezed because of tight deadlines, conflicting priorities, etc. In order to maximize their chances of success, companies need to view requirements as less of a project by project requirement and more a strategic corporate function.
The long-term view of requirements
Virtually every company plans its projects months and often years ahead, but that planning never seems to go very far. The annual planning and budgeting process establishes which projects will receive funding, when they are expected to be started and delivered, etc., but that is usually as far as it goes, and I don’t really understand that.
Presumably, if you know that a project has to be executed and your argument is compelling enough to secure funding during the planning process, then you must have at least some idea of what the project is expected to deliver. If that’s true, then why aren’t requirements being written--even if the official project start date is many months off?
The easy answer is that the business analyst, or equivalent role, is busy with other work for projects that are currently ongoing. I’m sure that it is true that they are working hard, but are they focused on the right things? It’s not unusual for BAs to …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. " - Albert Einstein |