Engineering projects often begin with a stack of requirements that arrive as fixed statements. They look authoritative, sometimes even immutable, and many teams accept them as the ground truth. The projects that succeed most consistently, however, are not those that implement requirements as written. They are the ones where engineers take the time to challenge requirements, to ask why they exist, and to test whether they reflect the real needs of the system.
A requirement is only a translation of higher-level intent into a technical form. If that translation is wrong, incomplete, or misapplied, then the system will carry the flaw into every layer of its design. Questioning requirements is therefore the one of most essential engineering tasks. It enables the creation of systems that are reliable, maintainable, and fit for purpose. At the same time, it accelerates development by reducing the risk of rework and avoiding unnecessary complexity, which is especially critical when timelines are tight.
Building Robustness Through Requirement Analysis
No requirement arrives in perfect form. Many are carried over from earlier projects, copied from vendor datasheets, or written under the pressure of a contract negotiation. Left unchallenged, such specifications can lead to overengineered systems that are fragile in practice or underperform when exposed to real conditions.
When engineers challenge requirements, they clarify what the system truly needs to achieve. They identify performance targets that look attractive on paper but do not reflect how the system will be used. They uncover gaps and contradictions that would otherwise surface only during integration. And they ground the design in operational reality, balancing performance with cost, power, and reliability.
The result is a more robust system which does not come from piling on safety margins without understanding, but from aligning design choices with the environment in which the system must function.
How Challenging Requirements Accelerates Development
Projects under pressure often skip requirement validation in order to move quickly into design. This is a false economy. The greatest source of schedule delays is late discovery of flawed or unfeasible requirements. Once design and implementation are in full swing, changing direction is expensive and disruptive.
Challenging requirements at the beginning allows teams to establish a clear and realistic scope. It prevents unnecessary features from entering the plan. It enables simpler architectures with fewer dependencies across disciplines. It also gives teams the rationale behind each design decision, which improves collaboration and prevents the friction that arises from conflicting interpretations.
Paradoxically, taking the time to ask questions early is what makes it possible to move faster later. By validating what really matters and discarding what does not, teams avoid the wasted cycles of redesign and firefighting that consume so much time near delivery.
Case Example 1: Boot Time Requirements
In one embedded system project, the requirement stated that the device must boot in under two seconds. At first glance this appeared reasonable, but an engineer asked why. Investigation revealed that the figure had been chosen to make a demonstration look impressive. In practice, the device was intended to remain on for several months at a time, with boot time having no impact on operational success.
If implemented as written, the requirement would have forced the use of more expensive and faster non-volatile storage, and it would have limited the ability to use modular initialization and secure boot procedures. After challenging the requirement, the team relaxed the constraint to ten seconds, which allowed a simpler and more secure boot sequence and reduced cost and power budget. The result was a system that was both, more robust and less expensive to produce.
Case Example 2: Data Transmission Requirements
Another project required that all sensor data be transmitted in real time. A developer asked what the data was actually used for. The answer was trend monitoring and occasional fault detection, not a control loop. Transmitting every sample in real time would have required a huge software development effort, and produced no additional value for the customer.
By reframing the requirement, the team implemented local preprocessing to transmit only summaries, anomalies, or daily reports. This reduced development costs, extended operational life (it was a battery powered device), and allowed the use of a smaller and cheaper processor. The system delivered more meaningful information while remaining efficient and sustainable in the field.
Case Example 3: Sampling Rate in an Embedded System
A further example involved sensor data acquisition specified at 1 kHz. The sensor could indeed sample at this rate, and the figure had been copied directly from the datasheet. Yet the data was transmitted over a shared bus operating effectively at 1 Hz, and no local data processing was applied. The higher sampling rate provided no benefit and created unnecessary load on the system.
By questioning this requirement, the team reduced the sampling rate to 10 Hz. The benefits made waves through the whole design: lower CPU load, reduced memory requirements, a smaller and less expensive microcontroller, lower power consumption, and simpler firmware. The system became more efficient, and easier to maintain while still meeting its true objectives.
Final Thoughts
Challenging requirements is what prevents flawed assumptions from embedding themselves in the system architecture and propagating through every design choice.
When timelines are short, thorough requirement analysis by the entire team becomes even more important. It avoids the rework that destroys schedules, reduces scope to what is essential, and ensures the design aligns with reality rather than with abstractions. The practice builds robustness, accelerates development, and gives teams a competitive advantage.
Engineers sometimes hesitate to question the inputs they receive, fearing it will be seen as slowing things down. In practice the opposite happens, because requirements that are examined with a critical eye reveal their gaps and contradictions early, at a stage where adjustments are still inexpensive and often improve the overall concept.
very insightful thoughts about Requirements analysis and its importance
thank you very much for sharing your Knowledge and experience :)