The Illusion of Requirements in Software Development

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional importance of requirements in software development by highlighting the difficulties in accurately identifying and agreeing upon requirements, which may lead to reliance on assumptions or misrepresentations.

Contribution

It introduces two novel challenges to the requirements concept, questioning their completeness and reliability in guiding software design.

Findings

Many plausible approaches lack sufficient overlap to form requirements.

Complete identification of all approaches is practically impossible.

Projects may rely on assumptions or misrepresentations as requirements.

Abstract

It is widely accepted that understanding system requirements is important for software development project success. However, this paper presents two novel challenges to the requirements concept. First, where many plausible approaches to achieving a goal are evident, there may be insufficient overlap between approaches to form requirements. Second, while all plausible approaches may have sufficient overlap to state requirements, we cannot know that unless all approaches are identified and we are sure that none have been missed. This suggest that many, if not most, software projects may have too few requirements drive the design process, and that analysts may misrepresent design decisions as requirements to compensate.