Summary

There is no right answer as to how much specificity is needed in a particular project context, and when it comes to providing adequate specificity, no one technique will work in every circumstance. Achieving the right balance of ambiguity and specificity will be a practiced skill your team will need to develop. The amount of specificity you need to provide may even vary over time, based on the changing skills of those downstream in the process and their understanding of the domain in which you operate .

Here are our recommendations to find the sweet spot in your project context.

• Use natural language whenever possible.

• Use pictures and diagrams to illustrate the intent further.

• When in doubt, ask! When you're not in doubt, consider asking anyway.

• Augment your specifications with more formal methods (Chapter 24) when you cannot afford to be misunderstood.

Train your people to recognize both the problem of ambiguity and the solutions that can be applied.