What vs. How … Could We Get This Straight?
Some professionals view the interrogatives what and how as peers, each addressing a distinct area of engineering solutions (e.g., designing systems). Other professionals characterize ‘requirements’ as the what, and the design for a system as the how. Contradiction? No, just a bit of confusion over perspective.- From the perspective of designing a system, both what (data) and how (processes) must be addressed. Both interrogatives (as well as the other four – where, who, when, and why) are essential for engineering a complete, robust solution.
- From the perspective of IT methodologies, requirements are always incomplete, so what the requirements say must be transformed into a system model that indicates how the requirements will be supported.
Tags: IT methodologies, requirements, system design, system model