Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

by Jennifer Pahlka

We don’t lack for examples of government needs, but it can be harder to grasp what the GDS meant by user needs. Defenders of the waterfall process will tell you that gathering requirements, the first stage of waterfall project management, is when the team understands the needs of the users. But software requirements are not user needs. Writing down everything everyone thinks the system might need to do per official policy and per multiple conflicting compliance regimens does not help you understand your users. It doesn’t even really help you understand the bureaucracy. It just gives you a list of elements that you’ll need to check off to call your job done. Actually understanding user needs often doesn’t look anything like what we think of as software development in the first place. It looks like building empathy.