The Requirements Crutch

As a junior engineer at an aerospace company, I learned a valuable lesson about what I’m supposed to do — always ask, “What are the requirements?”

The senior engineers and the program managers are figuring out what to make. And they pass that information along to the team in the form of requirements. 

The set of requirements forms the basis for all technical discussions.

“What do the requirements say?”
“Is that a ‘must-have’ or ‘nice-to-have’ requirement?”
“No, that’s not a requirement.”
“But the requirement says…”

The junior engineers aren’t the ones figuring out what to make. They are the ones doing the low-level work of making it. You don’t have to worry too much about the validity of the requirement, just what it means. 

Everyone assumes that the requirements are correct. That someone else has done the thinking. 

But someone has to do that thinking. Someone has to ask not just what it says to build, but whether it’s the right thing to build in the first place.

If you never challenge the requirements, you might build the perfect answer to the wrong question.