Re: [tlug] [OT] Good IT Resume

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Josh Glover wrote:

> My problem is...with the spec-free approach advocated by Curt. *That*
> is what I am claiming will not scale below excellent engineers.

Let me clarify: I am nowhere near "spec-free." "Low ceremony," yes.
"Just in time," yes. But not "spec-free"; I ask for or help design a
specification whenever I feel the need for one.

Say someone says, "there should be a login box on that page." That's not
much of a spec., but it is one. A few days later, I show them the page
as I'm hacking away on it, and they say, "no, put it on the right hand
side of the page, there. [Points.]" "No, no, underneath that status
display." "And fix the colours because it shouldn't stand out as much as
it does on the home page." "Yeah, no, wait, I we want to use the colours
from that other page." I show him the page. "Yes, those colours, not the
ones you just used." "That's it."

Does that sound like an unhappy customer and a specification failure to
you? Do you really think he'd rather have been thinking about that, and
trying to visualise it in his head, in a half hour meeting a few days
earlier rather than just looking at the actual product now and saying
what needs to be changed?

The whole "specify in detail early" thing is based around the idea
that changes are expensive later. When the cost of changing something
something is always cheap, why have a less experienced person make the
decision whilst trying to imagine the effects when a more experienced
person (the same person, at a later point in time) can make it while
seeing the actual result?

(Well, I do have an answer to that question: when there's a lack of
trust. I have a potential client right now where that's an issue: he
doesn't trust me to build the web site he wants, and I don't trust
him to come up with a specification that he'll be happy with before
ever having seen a single page of the web site. It's a nasty situation
where we're both spending more effort on trying to limit our potential
downsides than on getting a working site built.)

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com