This article got a lot of good reviews and interest. Too often the deliverables in a complex software project are disconnected and have little formal relationship to each other. This article outlines practical techniques for ensuring that deliverables are accountable to each other. I like the idea of building checklists into deliverables so that you know everything is covered.
It’s common knowledge (or it should be) that discovering requirements during page design is a recipe for madness. But no matter how much we believe this and strive to avoid this, it still happens. We’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s quite natural for clients to recall an infrequently-used feature or edge case when they see a page design. In this case, it’s easy to blame the customer for not having their requirements defined and communicated. Surely, we’re the victims here.
The reality is that the problem is ours. We rush into the creative process without fully understanding everything that our solution needs to do. If we are going to be successful, we need to figure out how to hold our creativity accountable to the full demands and scope of these complex projects. Unless we take the lead in defining the full scope of these projects, we will never be successful.
Read the article at johnnyholland.org.
