It’s pretty easy to have an idea. It’s not so easy to have a good idea, a little harder to communicate that fledgling idea to other people, and even more difficult to expand it into a project or product with a whole team of people. Collaborators misunderstand the purpose, ask questions that uncover new possibilities (or new problems), and bring fresh ideas that—even if they’re brilliant—can add complexity and uncertainty.
Ideas need to be challenged and shaped, but without a shared “true north,” it’s easy for even two people to get misaligned. If you’ve ever asked a kid to do a chore and gotten sub-par results, asked someone to pick something up at a shop and gotten the wrong brand, or ordered a drink at a restaurant and received something not-quite-right, you’ve experienced a mismatch of expectations that might have been avoided with better requirements.
And in software projects, mismatched expectations aren’t just frustrating—they’re expensive.
When projects go sideways, it’s rarely because the code won’t compile. More often than not, it’s because the project was built on fuzzy, incomplete, or shifting requirements. Clear requirements make four things possible:
We know that software projects are practically alive in their growth and ability to change. We’re always excited to replace a less-than-adequate scoped requirement with something better or reprioritize to accommodate a great idea. These pivots can cost time and money, though. Even when they seem insignificant, so just like the original idea, they need to be clearly understood and agreed to by all parties.
We don’t need to know every button label or form field order to estimate a project, but we do need to know whether we’re building a chat feature, an email notification system, or a full-blown SMS platform. Thinking of each feature from a perspective that asks who will use it, what they will do, and what their best outcome will be, lets you communicate some good boundaries that let us think along the right paths and ask better questions.
Think of it like a building: you don’t have to pick paint colors and trim yet, but we do need to agree whether it’s a house or an apartment building before any concrete is poured.
Here’s the process I recommend for shaping requirements before a project is under contract:
This may not give you pixel-perfect user stories or acceptance criteria, but it gives design a head start on journeys and workflows, and it gives project managers a workable “definition of done.”
Defining requirements lets the whole project be smoother:
Requirements don’t just magically exist—they have to be created, refined, and adopted. These day-one requirements still have to be fleshed out and fine-tuned across the life of a project until they become acceptance criteria. They have to be tailored to fit the business, the processes, and the people that rely on your product. It takes effort, but it’s effort that pays off every time. Clear requirements don’t kill creativity; they give it a place to thrive.
If you’re feeling stuck on the why, the who, or the how, a discovery session or workshop series with Clevyr can get your requirements rolling. Click the Contact us button in the upper right or give us a call at 844.425.3897 to start defining and refining your great idea!