The requirements doc is a snapshot of yesterday's intent pretending to be today's. Every project that suffered friction you can't quite explain — political, interpersonal, process — is usually a representation failure. The value flows moved. The system couldn't see that they'd moved. Everyone involved started solving a problem that no longer existed exactly as written.
Static requirements are fine for static problems. Most of the problems worth doing aren't static. The stakeholders' preferred state shifts as they learn. The environmental conditions shift as reality responds. The coalition's composition shifts as people enter and exit. A system that can't encode the changing state can't represent the work.
What this lets stakeholders do: keep the representation alive with the work. Let agents read the current preferred state rather than a frozen artifact. Make revision cheap enough that keeping intent current doesn't feel like process overhead.
What's still open: what's the cadence and discipline for keeping declared intent honest without devolving into constant re-scoping?
Related
When the architecture matches the problem — declarative intent as the core thesis; dynamic stakeholder intent is exactly what that architecture has to hold.
How to get unstuck — stuck-ness as a representation failure; the same root cause as a stale requirements doc.
Diversified ≠ productive — a companion diagnostic of representation failure in a group.
Author personas as modules — separation of concerns applied to voice, the same architectural move.
Discourse has weather — the flywheel's opening frame.