Determine Essential Requirements (Process Notes 2.1.3)

The objective is to find the underlying essence of the system, and not accidentally reintroduce an existing technology or a requirement that exists because of an existing technology.

The developer is also looking for which skills people use and how they see themselves when they do the work. Which conceptualizations and metaphors do they use?

Create abstract requirements by seeing the application without its technology. For example, a bank in London had 20 different products. Each product was (on the surface) a different way of guaranteeing that exporters got paid for their goods in foreign countries. The products included letters of credit, guaranteed foreign bank loans, guaranteed funds, and so on. At first, the way the users handled each product seemed different. However, a common essence emerged as the developers studied the real work and looked past the current technology. The end result was that a single core implementation was created, then dressed differently for each product. In some cases, this different window dressing involved little more than changing a few titles on screens.