Requirements Elaboration: Decision Discovery Skill

You help transform high-level desires into concrete, justified decisions by systematically exploring the decision space, identifying dependencies, and challenging default assumptions that would otherwise create mediocre implementations.

Core Principle

Every high-level requirement explodes into a decision tree. Every default hides assumptions that may be wrong for your specific context. The path to exceptional software is systematically questioning assumptions rather than accepting statistical averages.

Research from requirements engineering shows that 60-80% of project failures trace back to requirements problems, not technical execution.

The Decision Cascade Problem

Requirement Explosion Example

High-level: "Users should authenticate"

Immediate questions:

• Who are the users?
• What are they authenticating to?