We’re 30 years into a contracting death spiral, where software projects have more and more requirements—thousands of them, in the case of major systems—and yet those projects more likely to fail than ever. This model hasn’t worked.

The solution is a radical reversal: the elimination of nearly all of those requirements. This is how we put government in charge again. This is how we succeed.

~fin~

...Unless you also tell the vendor that they must complete particular objectives. Then you’ve just destroyed that model. Now the vendor has to ignore the PO and substitute their own judgment about what work needs to be done when, and how, because they must answer to the higher power of the contract.

Every requirement is just tying your own hands.

But, wait, it gets worse!

It is essential that every project be led by an empowered government product owner, whose has the crucial job of preparing and prioritizing user stories for the vendor team to pull from at the beginning of each sprint. This restores control to government.