Dan Willis writes Are Useful Requirements Just A Fairy Tale? (and why an IA should care). The article resonates with a lot of themes that we programmers have been dealing with at work over the last year. Sandy has mostly lead the charge to get more complete requirements written early in the process.
In some cases, this resulted in spotty requirements that only vaguely described parts of the challenge. These requirements lacked credibility and people tended not to pay much attention until they saw the user interface. Because of this, even points of conflict described well in the requirements werent addressed until the design was near completion.
We need different levels/sets of requirements. Our one set of requirements are still trying to serve multiple audiences: the client & project manager(s) who care about what will be done, the IA & designer who care about how it should look and behave (a superficial simplification – yes), and the developers who care about how all the pieces are implemented using our standard platform and work together. Dan addresses these groups and their different requirements needs quite intelligently