Devs are NOT requirements analysts.

Developers are builders not gatherers.

A quick aside:

From time to time, I’m going to be highlighting some behaviors, practices, and situations that inhibit developer moral or performance in some way.

These aren’t meant to be negative.

Rather, this is a way to speak out for devs who might just nobly accept the way things are.

Okay, back to the point.

Developers want to spend their time writing code not compiling resources, writing user stories, and making mockups.

It’s true that sometimes the developer is the right person to get the reqs together, but this is the exception not the rule.

But you don’t have the resources to dedicate someone to gathering requirements!

I hear you.

But is it worth the drag on your developers?

Quality requirements are VITAL to delivering software at speed.

High quality requirements = high quality software

So what can you do? You know you need great reqs but don’t want to dedicate a resource.

Start with a rough calculation on all the time it takes to gather the requirements for a particular feature. Talk with your devs to try and understand the work involved.

I’d wager that what you find is significant.

Investing in requirements is exactly that, an investment.

But! There is a significant return on that investment for you.

Make your devs happy (and significantly more productive), take requirements gathering off their plates.

Reply with ideas to name a series of these Voice of the Developer posts.

Best,

Andre

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