Tools: From ScrumBuddy to Brunelly: Bad Requirements Are Still Killing Software Projects

Alignment Breaks Long Before Code Fails ## Iteration Without Clarity Just Accelerates Churn ## ScrumBuddy Started as a Fix, Not a Product ## Context Loss Is the Real Scaling Problem ## Non-Functional Requirements Are Where Products Fail ## We Didn’t Need Another Tool. We Needed a System ## Enter Brunelly ## Vibe Coding Works. Until It Doesn’t ## A Clearer View of the Next Phase of Software A note from Brunelly's CEO: ScrumBuddy started with a problem every seasoned developer or tech lead still runs into: bad requirements quietly killing otherwise capable teams. If you’ve built software in the real world, this will sound familiar. Most projects kick off with what looks like shared understanding, until delivery reveals the team never aligned on the real users’ needs. The result? Predictable: rework. Closely behind came another frustration: estimation failures caused not by inexperience, but by underspecified thinking. Even in mature Agile or Scrum environments, teams miss estimates roughly 70% of the time. Planning becomes fragile, delivery unpredictable, and trust harder to maintain. The tools don’t fix this. Clarity does. The tooling is there. The process is there. But outcomes rarely change. It isn’t the people. It isn’t the tools. It’s missing clarity at the foundation. Iteration is vital. But iteration without clarity isn’t progress, it’s faster churn. Vague requirements build assumptions into your foundation, accumulate technical debt, and increase expensive course corrections. Every product team hits the same tension: when is it safe enough to start building? Momentum alone can’t rescue broken thinking. Speed moves you faster, but potentially in the wrong direction. That’s what led us to build ScrumBuddy. Good requirements change everything. Clear requirements lift the entire delivery chain: improving estimation, planning, quality, and decision-making. ScrumBuddy surfaced gaps, contradictions, and assumptions before code was written. Teams moved faster, waste declined, and planning became grounded. But over time, we realized a deeper truth: requirements don’t just define scope, they define everything downstream. Requirements often get written once, split into tickets, copied across tools, re-explained in meetings, and reinterpreted by different people. As work moves through modern delivery systems, context erodes faster than teams realize. Changes trigger compensations: more meetings, more process, more coordination. Less progress. The system itself becomes the bottleneck. Functional features are just the surface. Most failures come from missed non-functional requirements (NFRs): NFRs are expensive to bolt on later and every new requirement interacts with existing systems. Without clear understanding, “small” changes destabilize the system. Technical debt, more often than not, accumulates from incomplete understanding. Requirements must stay connected to architecture, code, and quality throughout the lifecycle. Improving requirements alone wasn’t enough. Fragmentation was a problem. What teams really need is clarity that travels: from planning to architecture to implementation to review. Not another plugin. Not another Jira layer. A connected system that keeps context intact. ScrumBuddy helped fix requirements in Scrum teams. Over time, we realized the same problems exist across planning, architecture, code, and tests far beyond Scrum. The old name was boxing us in. We needed something bigger: Brunelly. Brunelly remembers requirements as they flow into architecture, code, and tests. It keeps non-functional requirements visible. It shows what a new requirement touches before approval. It maintains clarity, so teams can act confidently. Brunelly is a semi-autonomous engineering system. Humans set direction, validate assumptions, and apply judgment. Brunelly takes on the structured, repetitive, execution-heavy work that slows teams down. It’s AI for teams who care about longevity, structure, and clarity, and not just living under the illusion that momentum equates to progress. The name? Inspired by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of history’s most ambitious engineers. He built systems that scaled with purpose and endured. That’s what Brunelly represents. Fast, fluid, AI-assisted development is what we call “vibe coding”. Its a great way to experiment. But when it’s time to build for real users, real scale, and real change, momentum isn’t enough. We explored this in depth in my next article → stay tuned Software teams need clarity, structure, and the ability to evolve. Brunelly is built for that next phase: building software that lasts. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse - Performance - Operational realities - Data growth and compliance