Common Requirement Problem Types: ‘And’
Writing clear, unambiguous, and verifiable requirements can be a daunting task. How requirements should be written differs from natural speech patterns, where we naturally focus on ensuring our information flows nicely, sounds good, and covers all details. Often, requirements do not need flowery words. In contrast to how we naturally speak and write, requirements must be formal, textural, and singular statements. They convey what shall be done and by what entity.
The issue here is usually not a lack of understanding around the purpose and importance of requirements, but the struggle with implementing what we know into our authoring. Realistically, we may need a little more support or guidance to re-word and re-write our requirements. Sometimes, certain words may seem impossible to re-word or resolve, or we use certain words so frequently that we do not know another way to write what we mean. Based on your feedback and our research, we found many common problem words seen across industries within requirements.
In the following series, we will go through common problem words. I will explain why the word is a problem and how to resolve it. I will also demonstrate some examples and exceptions to better understand the issue.
This article will focus on the word And.