On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:31:14 -0000, Tim Rowe <digi...@gmail.com> wrote:
2009/1/24 Rhodri James <rho...@wildebst.demon.co.uk>:
My experience with medium-sized organisations (50-100 people) is that
either you talk to Fred directly, or it doesn't happen. In particular
the more people (especially PHBs) that get involved, the slower the
change will come and the less like your original requirement it will
look. Each person, no matter how technically adept, has a significant
chance of misunderstanding what it is you need and/or expressing it
poorly to the next person in line.
So you talk to Fred, and he changes the "pong" library function to go
"ping", as you wish. Unfortulately, neither of you know that Alice is
depending on Fred's "pong" library function to go "pong" as specified,
and is totally stuffed when he delivers it and it goes "ping". That's
why changes to specifications need to go through a proper
specification change procedure if the team (not the organisation) is
more than a few people.
And, not coincidentally, why specification will take at least twice as
long as you thought humanly possible, and any implementation you do
before it's complete will probably have to be thrown away. The
productivity of a team large enough that they don't all talk to each
other anyway drops quite dramatically as one consequence of this.
This also assumes that the "proper specification change procedure"
works, which seems to be a bit on the optimistic side in many cases.
But we digress.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses
--
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