Cakes

Cote writes about requirements gathering and cakes.

If your powerful boss asks you for a cake, you can't easily find out the details of what he wants. You have to find out via secondary sources (e.g. the boss's calendar, asking the baker what sort of cakes the boss has ordered before). The calendar may not be up to date, and the baker may not remember accurately.

This takes longer and is more likely to go wrong. If there are more steps than necessary in finding out requirements, the solution is to understand what the difficulty is with asking him directly and work on reducing these difficulties.