# Business Requirements are Bullshit DevFeed: [Business Requirements are Bullshit]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Steve Yegge (noreply@blogger.com) Published: 2008-08-12T07:57:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Steve Yegge]() Topics: [Requirements](), [Agile]() Tags: [agile](), [opinion](), [requirements]() ## AI overview The author argues that gathering business requirements to determine what to deliver to a customer is fundamentally misguided, expanding on an answer to a CEO's question and relating it to Agile. ## Source excerpt Some CEO emailed me the other day. I don't remember who it was; people mail me all the time about their blah blah yawn product service thingy, and on the rare occasions I bother to read mail from strangers, I don't usually remember anything about the email, even if I respond to it. I can remember broad categories of questions I get, but everything else is just a blur. That's senility for ya. But this dude, or possibly dudette, asked me a really good question. One that made an impression. And by "really good", I mean it was one of the flat-out wrong-est business questions you could possibly ask. It was like asking: "How can I get the most out of my overseas child laborer pool?" There's no right answer to a question that's just wrong. But his question, well, people ask it a lot. In fact there are whole books that give answers to this inherently-wrong question. His question was: "Hello, blah blah, I'm the CEO or C-something-O or whatever of a company that blah blah BLAH, and I read your blog about Agile from almost 2 years ago, which kinda resonated with me in a scary way, inasmuch as I realized perhaps belatedly that I was being duped, BUT I was sort of wondering: How do you go about gathering business requirements, so you know what to deliver to the customer? Signed, blah blah blaaaaaaaaaah." (Note: not a verbatim transcript. But close enough.) And my answer was: Business requirements are bullshit! Well... actually it was: "gathering business requirements is bullshit", plus a bunch of accompanying explanation. But the shorter version sure is catchy, isn't it? The rest of this little diatribe expands a bit on my reply to this guy. (I actually sent him an email with much of this material in it. When I do reply to strangers, I still try do a thorough job of it.) Before we dig into the meat and potatoes of today's meal, let's talk about my credentials, and how it is that I am qualified to offer an opinion on this topic. My Credentials If you're a business person stumblin