How do I write WMS requirements?

Most guides on this start with a template: list your workflows, capture exception handling, document integration needs, define reporting requirements. The template isn't wrong. The problem is what gets put into it.

A requirements document captures what the founder believes the operation needs. The capture itself feels rigorous — you're writing it down, structuring it, reviewing it with the team. Every input came from the same source, though: your mental model of how the operation runs, plus what your team can articulate when asked directly. Both are filtered through proximity blindness. The workarounds nobody questions anymore don't show up. The exceptions that have become routine don't get flagged as exceptions. The process gaps people have built habits around don't register as gaps. The document captures the operation as you describe it, not as it actually runs.

There's a deeper problem underneath that one. Even when a requirements document is captured carefully, the format itself flattens what should be sharply weighted. Workflows, exception handling, integrations, reporting — all of it goes in, all of it gets reviewed, all of it shapes vendor evaluation. Every captured requirement reads as roughly equivalent input. What actually predicts vendor fit is a small set of operationally-specific levers — usually fewer than a dozen — that define how this operation runs and that most vendors will struggle to support in at least some respect. These aren't the longest items in a requirements doc. They're often not the most obvious ones. They're the ones that, if a system can't handle them well, no amount of feature breadth elsewhere compensates.

Surface them and you have a real filter. Bury them in a hundred-item requirements catalog and you have a document vendors can respond to favorably while still being wrong for the operation. Writing better requirements isn't the move. Writing the right artifact is — and the right artifact is not a requirements document.