The Concept Of Requirement Sneakage
I’ve encountered this issue several times in the past few months and I think it’s worthy of a discussion. I’d like to discuss the concept of requirement sneak age. What is this you may ask?
Requirement sneakage is the process by which the business (business users, business analysts etc) try to sneak in a last minute requirement by asking for a simple little change here and there.These are usually not part of any formal documents like a Scope Estimation Document or a Business Requirements Document. This has happened at least a half a dozen times during my time at my company.
At the company I work for all changes that affect scheduling have to be approved by the project manager because it creates conflicts with the current monthly work load. Thus the request is almost certainly denied. There certainly good reasons why there is a policy is place to prevent this. I will discuss the pros and cons of requirement sneakage below:
What Are The Pros and Cons Of Requirement Sneakage?
- Pros: Do I have any problems with Requirement sneakage as a developer? I really don’t mind a few small changes here and there especially if it makes the app just a bit better. Perhaps it’s just me wanting the impossible piece of perfect software.
- Cons: I can also see negative other side of the issue. I would have a problem though is that if I was making changes here and there and the business kept expecting this. I don’t want to be making 2-3 changes outside the scope of a requirements doc for every ticket. It would be darn near impossible to finish anything. What would happen if QA disagreed on the way a functionality worked because the change was not documented?
Requirement sneakage is something most developers will see at some time during there career. Developers should also be cautious to follow proper procedures to only allow requirement sneakage within the scope of there companies policy.
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011