Determine whether an empirically identifiable minimum-sufficient specification region exists

Determine whether, for practically relevant classes of software changes, there is a level of Progressive Specification rigor beyond which additional specification cost no longer produces commensurate reductions in downstream ambiguity, rework, or verification uncertainty.

Background

The paper proposes Progressive Specification as a hypothesis rather than an established law. Specification may range from natural-language intent through clarification, structured specifications, executable constraints, and formal specifications.

The unresolved issue is whether a task- and risk-dependent effective region can be observed in practice: increasing specification rigor may initially reduce semantic divergence and rework, but the authors do not know whether a point exists after which its additional lifecycle cost is no longer justified.