Spotting Requirements Gathering Problems Early on Scale-Up Software Projects
A short detective guide for individual contributors to catch requirements drift before it becomes a recovery effort. Three signals visible in the first 60 days.
Three signals that the team is building from a different document than stakeholders are reviewing
By the time stakeholders say 'this isn't what we asked for,' the requirements drifted three months ago.
On scale-up software projects, requirements drift starts early — often in the first 60 days — and accumulates silently for months before anyone notices. The handoff pattern lives in the gap between what stakeholders communicated, what the PM documented, and what engineering interpreted. The detective work is catching the drift while it's still cheap to correct.
Three signals are visible in the first 60 days. Each takes about ten minutes to check. If two or more are present, the project has a fidelity problem and the heavy recovery playbook is the next read.
Three signals to check at day 30 and day 60
0 / 3- Signal 1: stakeholders use different vocabulary than the team. Stakeholders say 'self-serve onboarding'; the team says 'signup flow.' These may or may not mean the same thing — but if no one has surfaced the difference, vocabulary drift is masking concept drift.
- Signal 2: requirements artifacts haven't been re-read in 30 days. If the original requirements doc is in the wiki and nobody has opened it since the project started, the team is operating from memory of the document, not from the document. Memory drifts.
- Signal 3: stakeholders are surprised by demos. A surprise in a demo — even a small one — is a signal that the demo isn't matching the stakeholder's mental model. One surprise is signal; two is data.
- Day 30First detective readWalk the three signals. 30 minutes total. Identify which are present.
- Day 30, day 3Glossary conversationIf signal 1 is present, schedule a 30-minute glossary conversation with stakeholders and team. Post the glossary somewhere visible.
- Day 45Requirements re-readIf signal 2 is present, schedule a team re-read of the original requirements artifact. 45 minutes. Note discrepancies between document and current understanding.
- Day 60Re-check signalsWalk the three signals again. If they're still present after corrective action, the project has structural drift and recovery is the next step.
The three signals are deliberately light. They produce signal, not certainty. Their value is catching the drift while it's still 30 days old rather than 90, when the recovery effort is small rather than substantial. For the heavier corrective when drift has already accumulated, see the heavy recovery playbook; for diagnostic quizzes, see the requirements gathering quiz and the new-PM version.