Difficulty of Requirements Discovery

Requirements are hard to understand and harder to specify. The wrong solution to this problem is to do a slipshod job of requirements specification, and rush ahead to design and code…. The right solution is to do whatever it takes to learn as many of the requirements as possible now. Do prototyping. Talk with more customers. Work for a month with a customer to get to know his or her job firsthand. Collect data. Do whatever it takes.