Re: [tlug] [OT] Good IT Resume

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 26/07/07, Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com> wrote:

> Say someone says, "there should be a login box on that page."
[...]
> Does that sound like an unhappy customer and a specification failure to
> you?

The customer is happy, and the specification has been specified, but
not codified. What happens when you come back to that project in six
months and you have no record of the process?

I also like a iterative specification process. The difference is that
I capture the process in a document, which evolves with the project,
so when my work is done, the document reflects the latest state of the
specification. Then in six months when I need to change something, I
have a great document that tells me precisely how the code is
*supposed to* work.

> 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?

Why do you think that anything that is not XP means endless meetings?
I do the same thing you do: when I need feedback from my customer, I
pick up the phone or walk over to his desk. We have an informal
conversation lasting a few minutes, I update the spec, then send an
email asking him to review my change to make sure I understood what he
wanted. Quick, no fuss, but it gets put in a document.

> 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?

I agree with this in spirit, but if you are really saying that late
changes are cheap, I think you are smoking something good, and I want
a toke.

How is a change cheap if it means altering your basic assumptions (and
the code that implements said assumptions)?

--
Cheers,
Josh