goga-define-requirements

goga-define-requirements

Purpose

Define the product requirements that describe what the product must do to deliver the established user experience and achieve the agreed product goals.

Transform the product context and user experience into explicit, observable, and testable product behaviour.

The result must be detailed enough for engineering to begin technical design without requiring product decisions to be invented.

---

Contract

consume:
  - product
  - problem
  - users
  - goals
  - user_experience

produce:
  - requirements

---

Core Principle

A requirement describes required product behaviour.

It answers:

What must the product do?

It must not answer:

How should engineers implement it?

For example:

When the user cancels an eligible order, the product must show that cancellation is in progress.

is a product requirement.

This is not:

The frontend must call POST /orders/{id}/cancel.

The second describes implementation.

---

Process

1. Derive requirements from the experience

Review the complete user_experience.

Identify every meaningful product behaviour required to make that experience possible.

Trace:

Goal
  ↓
User Experience
  ↓
Requirement

Every significant requirement should have a clear reason to exist in the user experience.

Do not create requirements that are not needed by the established product experience.

---

2. Define observable behaviour

Requirements should describe behaviour that can be observed from outside the implementation.

Prefer:

The user can retry the operation after a recoverable failure.

over:

The retry handler must invoke the operation again.

The requirement should remain valid regardless of the implementation approach.

---

3. Cover the primary scenario

Define the behaviour required for the main user flow.

For each meaningful user action, determine what the product must do.

Consider:

• accepted actions;
• resulting state;
• displayed information;
• available next actions;
• completion behaviour.