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From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:45 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Looking for Agile Experience
Whenever I hear people in IT (particularly in companies whose core business is NOT their IT) talk about requirements before coding, it's in the context of having as close to iron-clad specs as possible for a whole project prior to doing any coding at all for that project. The specs are typically only revisited if it is discovered that they are unworkable (and the IT people working under this model typically blame the users for giving them bad specs or for asking to change the specs after the work starts). This model sounds much, much more like waterfall, and practically not at all like agile.
The specs are revisited in the waterfall method too. "Iron-clad" is rare. When the user sees even a prototype, there are changes, almost every time. When the user sees the end product, there are almost always changes. Half the time the changes to the specs come from us because (1) we see a Danger Will Robinson when we get a look at the request specs, or (2) a bad gap in the specs, or (3) maybe an opportunity for something will add great big value to the result. I'm not talking even about miscommunications...
One buddy of mine passed on something he had learned from someone else again. Users make changes so much before you're done, he said, just get the code done so fast that they don't have time to change their minds! He didn't mean quick and dirty, because he liked to test it so tight that it never got stopped at QA.
This is one of the reasons that Agile gets traction. Users' representatives and testers are involved at every step In bite-size chunks, to diminish the above kinds of productivity drains.
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