-Andy Fields
http://www.twitter.com/PainPoint

It’s just a semantic point, but many of us like to say that requirements should be free of design. Under this terminology, once we get into specifying solutions, we’ve done some design and are therefore not doing requirements.

For this reason, I say that a requirement merely restates a problem you’re trying to solve, but in terms of the least stringent conditions that must hold to solve or avoid the problem.

So if the problem or pain point is

“Users can’t make phone calls from my car.”

The requirement is

“It shall be possible for users to make phone calls from their cars.”

This example is oversimplified, but hopefully you get the point.

Next, product designers can specify that the product will be a cell phone with certain features, but then it’s a design specification.