Turn a vague request into a testable requirement

Question

Accepted Answer

The questions, in order of value: 1. What decision would you make differently if you had this? — Without an answer, there is no requirement, only a wish. 2. Who looks at it, and how often? — A weekly management review and a daily rep dashboard are different products. 3. What does an unhealthy pipeline look like today? — Elicits the actual metric. 4. How do you find out today, and what is wrong with that? — Reveals whether this is a data problem or a process problem. 5. What would make you stop using this? — Surfaces constraints nobody volunteers. A testable requirement: As a sales director, in the Monday pipeline review, I need to see every open opportunity over £50k that has had no logged activity in 14 days, ranked by value, so that I can assign follow-up before the weekly forecast is submitted. Acceptance: the list refreshes by 07:00 Monday; it matches a manual CRM query within one opportunity; each row links to the opportunity record. What makes it testable: a specific audience, a…