How Ambiguity, Authority, and Non-Functional Requirements Shape Software Long Before Code
Vagueness in specifications isn’t just a writing flaw; it’s deferred disagreement waiting to become expensive code. Deciding where the truth lives on paper is far cheaper than arguing about it later in production.
Before Requirements Engineering entered my dictionary, software felt conversational.
Users spoke.
I listened.
Code followed.
Requirements existed, but they were informal.
They lived in emails, meetings, and shared intuition.
The browser asked for things.
The server complied.
The database quietly remembered.
Nobody argued about “meaning” because the system was small enough that meaning fit in our heads.
I didn’t call this a problem.
I called it ✨ Productivity ✨.
The Idea That Requirements Could Be Engineered
Requirements aren’t just notes to help developers remember things; they are engineering artifacts. They exist to align customers, contractors, and systems before a single line of code is written.
I was introduced to a quiet but *radical * idea:
Requirements are not “notes”, they are engineering artifacts.
Requirements engineering is the process of establishing the services a system must provide and the constraints under which it must operate and be developed.
Not code.
Not design.
Commitments.
A requirement could be a loose, high-level statement.
OR
It could be a precise, formal specification.
Both counted.
Both carried weight.
That reframing mattered.
Requirements weren’t just there to help developers remember things.
They existed to align customers, contractors, and systems before anything was built.
The requirements document became an official statement.
Sometimes the basis for a bid.
Sometimes the contract itself.
The promise was clear.
If requirements were engineered carefully, misunderstandings wouldn’t propagate into architecture.
Disagreements would surface early.
The system would be built on agreed truth, not assumptions.
For the first time, requirements sounded like a way to scale understanding itself.
And that was compelling.
The Discomfort with Vagueness
Vagueness isn’t just a writing flaw; it is deferred disagreement waiting to surface. The discomfort sets in when you realize the system will eventually force a rigid choice under pressure, whether you planned for it or not.
The confidence didn’t last long.
Almost immediately, there was a contradiction… and treated it as normal.
A requirement can range from a high-level abstract statement to a detailed, formal specification.
Both are called requirements.
Both are necessary.
That felt unstable.
Abstract requirements were encouraged so solutions weren’t pre-defined.
But those same requirements might later become the basis of a contract.
Open to interpretation.
Then suddenly not.
Examples made the tension obvious.
“A user shall be able to search the appointments list.”
Search across all clinics?
Search within one?
By name, date, or ID?
I was warned that ambiguity isn’t theoretical.
Different readers will interpret the same requirement in different ways.
User intention drifts one way.
Developer interpretation drifts another.
I recognized the danger immediately.
Vagueness wasn’t just a writing flaw.
It was deferred disagreement.
And yet, the process accepted it as inevitable.
That’s where the discomfort set in.
Not because abstraction was wrong,
but because it quietly asked the system and the people building it to resolve meaning later, under pressure.
The Authority of the Requirements Document
The document didn’t just support the conversation; it replaced it. Authority quietly moved from people to paper, making the written word the final judge of truth.
The requirements document was not treated as a helpful guidance.
It was treated as law.
The software requirements document, we were told, is the official statement of what system developers are required to build.
Not a design document.
Not an implementation plan.
An agreement.
It must include both user requirements and system requirements.
It must be understandable to customers and precise enough for developers.
It must say what the system should do, not how it should do it.
That framing changed its role.
The document wasn’t there to “support” conversations.
It *replaced * them.
When disagreements arose, the document would be consulted.
When scope was questioned, the document would decide.
When accountability was needed, the document would be referenced.
Authority moved from people to paper.
I accepted that shift without resistance.
If truth was written down carefully enough, it could be enforced later.
If something went wrong, the document would protect everyone involved.
At least, that was the promise.
Handing Truth to the Document
There comes a moment when authority moves from people to paper. By formally handing the system’s “truth” to the document, we stop relying on memory and start building against an agreed reality.
There was no single moment where I consciously gave up responsibility.
It happened gradually, through process.
User requirements were written in “natural language” so customers could understand them.
System requirements were written more formally so developers could implement them.
Functional requirements described the services the system should provide.
Non-functional requirements described constraints such as performance, reliability, standards, and process.
Everything had a place.
Once it was documented, it was considered settled.
Questions about meaning stopped being asked out loud and started being answered implicitly in code.
If the requirement was unclear, the implementation chose.
The document had spoken.
The system would interpret.
By the time development started, truth already felt delegated.
The requirements document wasn’t just describing the system anymore.
It was carrying the responsibility for correctness.
And without noticing, I let it.
Early Success and Cooperative Components
It felt like alignment because everyone was temporarily reading the document the same way. The components cooperated only because the underlying ambiguities hadn’t yet been forced into conflict.
At first, the process worked exactly as suggested.
Functional requirements flowed cleanly into system behavior.
The server implemented the services as specified.
The browser exposed them in ways users expected.
Non-functional requirements sat above everything, shaping decisions without being tied to a single component.
Performance influenced architecture.
Reliability informed redundancy.
Standards constrained tools and languages.
The components cooperated.
The browser interpreted user requirements generously.
The server translated them faithfully into operations.
The database enforced structure and preserved state.
When requirements were incomplete, developers filled the gaps.
When interpretations differed, the system still produced “acceptable” outcomes.
Validation hadn’t failed yet.
The requirements appeared sufficient.
The system felt aligned because, so far, everyone was still reading the document the same way.
When Ambiguity Accumulated
Small ambiguities seem harmless individually, but they accumulate into a dense fog of unstated assumptions that the system is eventually forced to resolve on its own.
I was warned that requirements are never complete or fully consistent.
At first, that felt academic.
Then it became observable.
The same requirement was read differently by different people.
Users focused on intention.
Developers focused on implementation.
Managers focused on outcomes.
Non-functional requirements blurred the most.
Non-functional requirements applied to the whole system, not individual features.
Response time mattered everywhere , so no component claimed it.
Reliability mattered always , so it belonged nowhere.
The browser began compensating for unclear behavior.
The server started making assumptions.
The database stored data whose meaning depended on context that wasn’t written down.
Each ambiguity was small.
Collectively, they accumulated.
Nothing broke.
But clarity eroded.
The system still worked, yet it was quietly carrying unresolved decisions forward exactly as The Origami Software Engineer said it would.
The Moment Requirements Failed Socially
The system was verified against the document, yet trust fractured. It is possible to build a technically perfect system that completely fails the social reality of its users.
The most dangerous failures in requirements engineering are not technical.
They are social.
The failure surfaced during validation.
A requirements review asked a simple question:
Does the system provide the functions that best support the customer’s needs?
On paper, it did.
Every requirement had been implemented.
Every constraint acknowledged.
In practice, expectations diverged.
Stakeholders pointed to the system and said it wasn’t what they meant.
Developers pointed to the document and said it was what was written.
The requirements were consistent.
They were verifiable.
They were wrong.
The browser had behaved correctly.
The server had implemented faithfully.
The database had preserved the system’s truth without distortion.
And yet, trust fractured.
Not because the system “failed”,
but because the requirements had allowed multiple truths to coexist until delivery forced a reckoning.
When Fixes Look Like Progress
We often mistake the frantic activity of patching the document for actual progress. The stack gets heavier with every band-aid, but the foundation remains cracked.
When requirements fail, the instinct is correction.
- Clarify the wording.
- Add detail.
- Introduce new constraints.
That’s exactly what we did.
- Ambiguous requirements were rewritten.
- Missing cases were added.
- Non-functional requirements were tightened with numbers, thresholds, and metrics.
On paper, the system “ improved ”.
- Validation checks passed more cleanly.
- Traceability links multiplied.
- The requirements document grew heavier and more confident.
The system responded in kind.
- Performance stabilized.
- Behavior became more predictable.
- Fewer questions surfaced during reviews.
It felt like progress.
But the deeper issue remained untouched.
We were fixing interpretations after they had already shaped the system.
The document was becoming more precise, but only because reality had forced it to be.
The requirements looked better.
The cost of getting them there was just no longer visible in the document itself.
Wrestling with Change
Change stopped being a casual update and became a negotiated adversary. We traded speed for control, realizing that governing the chaos requires the heavy armor of impact analysis.
Stability was never pretended to be possible.
- Requirements change because organizations change.
- Because stakeholders differ.
- Because systems live longer than their original assumptions.
So the process adapted.
Requirements management was introduced to contain the movement.
- Each requirement was uniquely identified.
- Change requests were formalized.
- Impacts were analyzed.
- Costs were estimated.
Nothing changed casually anymore.
Every adjustment had to pass through negotiation.
Every update rippled across traceability links.
The system became governable , but also slower.
- The browser waited for clarification.
- The server hesitated before evolving.
- The database accumulated history it could not forget.
Change was no longer chaotic.
It was controlled.
And in that control, it became clear how much effort was required simply to keep shared understanding intact once it had been externalized into documents.
Understanding What Requirements Really Do
Requirements are never about merely listing features. They are about assigning responsibility and deciding exactly where truth and accountability must live within the system architecture.
The ideas finally converged into something simpler than process.
Requirements were never about listing features.
They were about assigning responsibility.Functional requirements decide what services exist.
Non-functional requirements decide who is accountable when things go wrong.Performance requirements aren’t optimization advice.
They determine where latency is allowed to accumulate.Reliability requirements aren’t aspirations.
They decide which components are permitted to fail.Consistency requirements aren’t implementation details.
They declare where truth must live.
Once seen that way, many earlier tensions made sense.
Ambiguity wasn’t just poor wording.
It was undecided authority.
When requirements stayed abstract for too long, the system absorbed that uncertainty and resolved it implicitly through architecture, through code, through operational pain.
This wasn’t about learning to write better documents.
It was about deliberately deciding where decisions are no longer negotiable.
What It Leaves You With
Maturity isn’t flexibility everywhere; it’s knowing exactly where flexibility stops. You stop fighting the paperwork when you realize it is a cheaper way to argue than writing code.
It doesn’t end with rules.
It ends with responsibility.
Requirements engineering isn’t about predicting the future.
It’s about making the present explicit enough that disagreement shows up early.
Scalability doesn’t come from smarter systems.
It comes from systems that aren’t forced to decide things they were never meant to decide.
Non-functional requirements matter because they constrain the whole system.
They draw borders around performance, reliability, security, and change.
Maturity isn’t flexibility everywhere.
It’s knowing where flexibility stops.
What it ultimately teaches is simple, and uncomfortable:
If you don’t decide where truth lives,
the system will decide for you later, and at a much higher cost.
So, you stop fighting the paperwork and realize it’s a cheaper way to argue than writing code.
That’s not failure.
That’s evolution.
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