While network standards that form the backbone of the Internet are widely accepted, cloud standards have been adopted more slowly by the community and the marketplace. As cloud infrastructure technology matures, increased vendor interest is driving a renewed effort to create viable standards.

Of all of the requirements a stakeholder says "must" be done, how do you know which ones "should" be done? Connecting the project vision and goals to the requirements can help your team decide.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been looking for ways to apply the techniques of pull conversations to getting specifications from our customers. Pull conversation techniques advise us to let go of our own assumptions and judgments and to try to put ourselves into our stakeholders’ world.