Brad Nunnally in our User Experience group pushed this out to a bunch of people via Yammer which we are starting to use a bunch. Anyway, Fred Beecher does a great job of describing the pains of using a requirements driven approach and where it fails. He also has a nice graphic outlining a hybrid approach using high level requirements with User Research to create a valid design. I’m in complete agreement and have seen the value on our projects where we create a high level requirement document while at the same time using a more objective approach to dive into the detail on how the web ui should look and act. I also think it corresponds quite nicely to the use of visualization tools that I’ve blogged about before.
What a User Driven Appaoch Might Look Like
Fred goes into much more detail in his post while also comparing and contrasting a more traditional approach. You should read the whole thing.
I would characterize the problem as waterfall vs. iterative instead of requirements vs. users. In that context, I agree! If I am estimating a project I want the input both users and business stakeholders. Most gaps that I see in projects are due to users and business stakeholders being blinded by the bright, shiny, fun requirements and thus unable to see the shadowy boring requirements that are also necessary.