A software requirements checklist

#100DaysToOffload#note#quote#practices#tech

I just found a great post on the Etsy Engineering blog suggesting a possible checklist for new product requirements. In reality, this checklist is very hard to fulfill, but it's a nice reminder of what a well thought out requirement could look like.

Scope

  • Is the feature meant to be very polished and finished or are we just trying to get user feedback as an MVP?
  • If we are running a MVP, is the current feature a true MVP? How can we simplify or cut scope?

Eligibility

  • What populations should be included or excluded from the experiment? When should users see this feature? (Which pages, signed in/signed out, mobile, desktop, etc.) Where/when should bucketing occur?
  • Will the experiment conflict with any other experiments? Do the experiments need to run exclusively?
  • What countries should the experiment run in (can impact translations)?

A11Y

  • Is there any special accessibility work this feature will require? If extra work is anticipated, check in early with our a11y team.
  • When testing and developing we should keep two users in mind - a keyboard user and a voice over user, do we need to add other code for these users?

Translations

  • Are there any strings to be translated that should be submitted ASAP?
  • Do we need to translate any labels for a11y?

Observability

  • How will we know that the feature is working? Are there existing graphs we can use or do we need new ones?
  • Should any of these metrics have a threshold or alerting?
  • Are we missing any key events to obtain user feedback?
  • How will we compare our control and variant?

Performance

  • Is there anything in my experiment that could degrade performance of the site?
  • Do I need an operational experiment to verify that Iā€™m not impacting performance?

Error States

  • Do we have designs for loading states?
  • Do we have designs for unsuccessful requests and error handling?
  • Do we have informative logging when there are errors?

QA

  • What set of browsers and devices should we test our new feature against?
  • Which user perspectives do we need to test?

Ramping

  • What will our ramping strategy be?

Check out the original post for a full writeup and the intentions behind this checklist.

This is post 056 of #100DaysToOffload.

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