About two years ago I worked with a team which had to live (or suffer?) from requirements specifications with hundreds of pages of prose. This kind of document is hard to read, understand, and maintain. If you want to change it, and your customer is external, you have to follow a change management process which typically includes exchanging and having drafted and approved even more documents.
Ideally, requirements would be written in a way that makes it easy for the development team to verify whether the system satisfies them. So why not making requirements executable? That way your team members can run them as often as needed, and they could stop immediately once the system passes those tests.
The way to go forward is therefore executable specifications, or story tests. The most prominent thought leader on this is probably Rick Mugridge, on whose web site you can also find further information.
One tool to create and maintain such customer tests is Fitnesse. It is available for many different languages.
The benefits are very compelling. You have a much tighter link between your customer (might also be a product manager) and your development team. Executable specifications are a means for improving communication. You also get a tool that reduces the gap between what your customer wants the system to do, and what the system really does.
From my experience, it's worth playing with this concept. It might turn out to be an excellent addition to your toolbox for agile project management.
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