A Requirements Paradox:

How much more effective could American developers be if they, too, took the time to understand their clients’ needs as though they were going to be a world and a dozen time zones away?  If you didn’t have too many chances to ask your clients questions and you had even fewer chances to screw up, how much more effort would you put into understanding what you were expected to do before you started?

I’d recently written a request for proposals (RFP) to help a client obtain a software product.  In response, we received well over a dozen proposals.  The client was thrilled with the level of detail in the specification and many of the vendors similarly commented on how pleased they were to respond to such a thorough spec and how easy the detailed RFP made it for them to respond with a complete and accurate project cost.

One thing that struck me was the number of vendors who completely ignored the specification in their response.  Another thing I found shocking was the number of vendors who, instead of proposing per the spec, wanted to revisit the entire specification-writing process and charge the client for their time to redo what I was already paid to do.

Why could some companies respond to the spec and others not?  What does this say about their ability to read a spec, let alone write one?  What does it say about their ability to listen to and communicate with their clients?  Companies that don’t take the time to listen to their clients’ needs deserve to lose work to overseas developers.

Effectiveness at writing requirements goes hand-in-hand with effectiveness at producing products -- which is the hidden enabler of "quality" that off shore developers seem to be able to produce at their seemingly lower prices.  It is important for developers to have access to and frequent communication with their clients.  However, some calls to the client could be avoided and doing so would allow more work to get done.

Good requirements result in fewer of these avoidable delays and also contribute to more accurate estimates and better product delivered on time and budget.  All of these benefits result in happier customers.  Maybe, taking time to identify, document, and agree upon formal requirements might just be the key to keeping more development work on our shores.

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