Questioning the requirements

How it works

The model reads the requirement text, along with any linked designs or earlier decisions you include, and is asked for questions rather than a rewrite. Useful prompts push it in specific directions: conditions with no stated outcome, terms used in two senses, numbers with no unit or limit, behaviour that depends on a role or state that isn't defined, and statements that can't be falsified as written ("fast", "intuitive", "secure"). Asking it to group the questions by who can answer them — product owner, developer, user, legal — turns the output into something you can take to a refinement session. A second pass that compares the story with neighbouring stories catches contradictions between them, which a reviewer reading one ticket at a time misses.

When to use it

Before refinement or planning sessions, so the questions are ready when the people who can answer them are in the room; on long specifications nobody will read twice; on requirements written by someone outside the team, such as a client or regulator; and when a feature is being picked up again after a long gap.

Limitations

The model has no knowledge of what the team already agreed in conversation, so a share of its questions will be settled matters, and wading through them costs time. It flags what is unusual in the text, not what is risky in the business — a perfectly clear requirement for the wrong thing gets no questions at all. It also tends to produce a long list of evenly weighted questions, and its confidence that something is ambiguous doesn't track whether the ambiguity matters.

Before you reach for it

Run an example-mapping session with product, development and testing, where concrete examples expose gaps and questions before the story is accepted.

What you still own

Choosing which questions are worth anyone's time, and deciding whether the requirement is testable enough to start on.

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