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Over Specification -- too concrete

Over-specification is easy to identify as it usually manifests itself in a sentence of the form: ``you must use X because X does Y''. Clearly, a requirements document would be better saying ``you must do Y'', and it could even state ``and X is an alternative way of guaranteeing Y''. Otherwise, if we had a machine that ``uses Z to do Y'' then this machine would be rejected even though it met its requirements.

An example of this is standard 66:

``Open standards shall be used to ensure that the various technical components [...] interoperate''



margaret 2006-05-25