I'm starting on a new project and the person that is wanting this done recommended we have a "living document of requirements"

Fuck no!

This project isn't for Boeing by any chance?

Agile != Anarchy

@gibus Not directly, but it kind of is in a way.

Just say ‘you can have whatever you want but I am not starting it until the living document of requirements is in a fucking coma’.

Yup, we got a few, they're called package.json, Gemfile, and Dockerfile.

It's fine... just have a livingline instead of a deadline... whoops, the line moved two months into the future! Oh look, it moved again!

And a living salary demand: oh look, prices just went up...
Maybe make that correlate with lines of code being added to that requirements doc...

Combine a living hourly rate with a living line and you've got a realistic workflow designed for people who have no idea what's going on but have a lot of money.
Yes, I'm talking about the government.

Finally a product owner who is experienced enough to know that requirements will change multiple times over the project's runtime.

For most non-trivial software changing requirements are an unavoidable fact. Business processes change. Laws change. Markets change. The experience of the people involved change. Design errors are found (in the software - and in the business processes to be modeled).

@Oktokolo Wait, are you pro that guy? This is devRant, we gotta be the ranter.

But I get your point. living requirements could also be a Jira.

However, with living requirements, there comes living deadline or living payment.

@dder
My comment actually was a rant against naive devs not knowing that requirements always change... But i cut that part before submitting.

And yes: With great change comes the great crunch and deadlines fall like flies on the fields of meager pay...

@Oktokolo I wouldn't exclude the possibility of requirements changing, but updating the requirements document involves updating basically everything about the project. It's not a "live document" at that point, it's just amended, once everyone approved the new plan, new conditions, new price and new deadline.

I don’t see a problem if they pay for the added time and no deadlines are set, i actually like those project the most!

@elwd Unfortunately with layoffs looming I would like to show I can bring as much value to the company as possible and not have my time dedicated to a project that eventually has no impact.

@elwd Also I'm salaried so no overtime.