Requirements are the challenge every Product Manager faces. Each software company manages to deal with the requirements headache more or less successfully, and headache - or heartache - is exactly how many people look upon the whole process.

Yet viewing requirements as a necessary evil can get you into trouble. After all, requirements are how your product moves forward, and such a critical aspect of your business must take center stage and have the full and enthusiastic backing of the entire organization, from sales and marketing to engineering, consulting, and customer service.

Given that you must face this necessary, painstaking process, the question becomes: How much pain should it take? You want to find the minimum amount - the minimum daily requirement, so to speak - that will fulfill your development function’s nutritional needs. There’s no sense in overkill, because the developers won’t necessarily listen to the details anyway.

So here are a few guidelines to help you get the most return on your investment in the requirements process, and choose the appropriate path for your organization in an industry that demonstrates widely different levels of effort from company to company.