I call this fractal requirements. It most commonly afflicts organizations with management that insists upon KISS interactions from their direct reports, but th

I call this fractal requirements. It most commonly afflicts organizations with management that insists upon KISS interactions from their direct reports, but then micromanages the details when the going gets tough (scrutiny from higher layers). Some of the more common phrases you will hear in these interactions is, "I don't understand why this has to be so complex", or "Give me the 50 thousand meter/foot summary". They elevate their mental model of the domain to a level where they cannot resolve the granular details. Analogous to the lack of optical resolution of any telescopes (including Hubble) we have to see the American flag on the moon [1]. You need a very massive bandwidth (the telescope diameter) to resolve those details, but then you trade off for increased processing time (analogy breaks down here). Surprised Pikachu when they drill down, and the requirements explode in complexity. With most successful, highly-refined systems, it isn't the primary requirement that should be the focus of planning (Microsoft Word is just a text editor, how hard can it be!?). It is all of the 1% of features 1% of the market/stakeholders want that deliver 80% of the value proposition of the system to them. Stacked together, all those "corner cases" add up the value of the overall system, and add up the complexity. It isn't just a heap of features binned together; the team has to make sense of how it all fits together. [1] http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/45-our-solar-system/the-moon/the-moon-landings/122-are-there-telescopes-that-can-see-the-flag-and-lunar-rover-on-the-moon-beginner http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/45-our-solar-syste...