Re: [tlug] Giving a program priority briefly

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

>> The thing that impresses me is that not one of you mentions
>> *specification*...
> 
> That's because, for typical business and productivity systems, a level
> of specification greater than "arm-waving" is, in the majority of cases,
> useless. Most clients, product managers and even developers who are
> also the product managers don't know all that well what they want, and
> thinking about it doesn't generally help that much. It's very often
> faster to kick around some ideas, do a rough implementation, examine the
> result, and run round that loop a few more times than it is to try to
> write a spec.

Exactly. Though, as Josh pointed out ("[you have to] get the customer to
sign off on *some* kind of spec") you need a good client relationship to
do this.

As a typical example I may get a request for a web form that has to
"grab customer data, put it in a database and be cool". That is the
requirements document, and "cool" might be spelt "kewl". Now I can
either sit down for some long meetings with the client, draw
screenshots, type up a spec, get a sign off then spend 20 hours
developing. Or I can say, "I can give you a barebones version, that
actually works, for 5 hours work, and then we'll discuss what needs to
be added." As I do that 5 hours I'll email off questions like, "do you
want name as one field, split as surname/forename, or don't care" as
they occur to me.

Less risk (*) and more efficient use of resources for the client, and
more time spent on the enjoyable stuff for me.

But you need a client who can cope. A dry Japanese manager is normally
going to care more about lots of paper specs up front than efficient
resource usage. After all this is a country where it takes 6 men to
change a street lightbulb: one to go up the ladder, two to hold the
ladder, two to direct traffic, and one to supervise and take photos of
the light before and after.

Darren

*: I.e. they discover after 5 hours not 20-30 hours that they actually
wanted something very different.



-- 
Darren Cook
http://dcook.org/mlsn/ (English-Japanese-German-Chinese free dictionary)
http://dcook.org/work/ (About me and my work)
http://dcook.org/work/charts/  (My flash charting demos)