The Speclr Blog

For professionals who build with intent and precision.

From vague idea to clear specs - Product Definition, Requirements Engineering, Software Architecture, Backlog Planning, AI Development, and the structured practices that separate professional teams from everyone else.

RSS Feed
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Sarah
Requirements EngineeringIntermediate7 min readThe User Story Problem

User stories are monologues. That’s why your refinement keeps breaking.

Your refinement meetings keep breaking the same stories. The team writes better ones next time. It breaks again. The problem isn't story quality - it's that the format itself turns requirements into a monologue.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Michael
Requirements EngineeringIntermediate9 min read

Coding Agents are the sloppiest developers you'll ever hire

A coding agent doesn't fill spec gaps the way an experienced developer does. It exploits them. The difference isn't capability - it's consequence. This is a 2AM postmortem, and what it actually tells you about building with AI.

Friday, April 10, 2026
Michael
Requirements EngineeringIntermediate8 min read

Spec-driven development starts one step too late

SDD tools like GitHub Spec Kit and AWS Kiro solve a real problem. But every one of them starts with a spec already in hand - and nobody asks how it got there.

Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Jonas
Behavior-Driven DevelopmentBeginner8 min read

BDD is a thinking tool. The tests are optional.

Most BDD rollouts fail the same way: someone installs Cucumber before anyone understands why. The core of BDD isn't a framework, it's a sentence. Write the scenario before you write the code. Everything else is optional scaffolding.

Sunday, March 29, 2026
Sarah
Requirements EngineeringIntermediate7 min read

Why backlogs fail before the first sprint

Teams keep trying to fix their backlogs with better grooming, stricter templates, and more Jira fields. It never works - because the problem isn't in the backlog.