The other common issue was that the non-technicals didn't grasp the need for absolutes and specificity. One common issue revolved around dates.
So we would get a ticket that "such and such permission should expire at a reasonable time on the date specified." Reasonable time was not defined and it turned out to be whenever the particular thing closed.
They would also forgot to list exceptions to that expiration policy, which the people doing it manually would have seen on the post-its this system replaced.
Where I work, for larger projects, we have business analysts or product managers who are supposed to help with converting the user request into some sort of specification.
If the project is a smaller one, then the developer is supposed to be acting in an analyst-developer type role. In my fairly limited experience the analyst part tends to take a back seat in these smaller projects.
I believe, though people are free to disagree, that it’s on the people developing the solution to ensure it satisfies the users needs. If the user is jumping to a solution, then it’s up to the team to take a step back and ensure the problem has been satisfactorily defined.
Note: I work on internal business apps used in a large corporation, and I have never worked on consumer facing apps.
Yes, I've found that a useful way around this is to go back to the non-technical user and ask them why. Why do you want to do this? Why do you want to do this in this manner?
That usually either gives the implementor enough information to wholeheartedly agree with the proposed solution, or to suggest something more appropriate.
Ran into a lot of situations like this:
https://xkcd.com/1425/
The other common issue was that the non-technicals didn't grasp the need for absolutes and specificity. One common issue revolved around dates.
So we would get a ticket that "such and such permission should expire at a reasonable time on the date specified." Reasonable time was not defined and it turned out to be whenever the particular thing closed.
They would also forgot to list exceptions to that expiration policy, which the people doing it manually would have seen on the post-its this system replaced.