At first I thought "Get real!". Then towards the end I realised that "usable specs" are pretty much what I use when I'm developing something for my own use, and I bet most others do the same. But in a large corporate environment - unlikely. And for out-sourced development - no chance, I think.

Let's consider out-sourced development first. In this situation a spec is part of a contract, and may become the basis of a lawsuit. A loose spec is an invitation to a developer to play the extremely profitable change control game - interpret the spec in a way which is of little use to the client then charge the earth for the changes. And the legal world likes single large documents because once they're printed (preferably multiple copies) it's easy to track them and hard to tamper with them, so they're far better evidence than anything electronic.

Unfortunately the same sort of adversarial situation seems to crop up in aspects of all projects in large organisations - some people want to hold the project to ransom (as US Senate comittee chairmen do with legislation), some don't want to commit themselves until they're sure it's going to succeed but then come along with a ton of new requirements, some just don't have a clear idea what they need, etc.

Traditional specs will with us for as long as there's any risk of adversarial elements in projects - for ever, I fear.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on February 27, 2003 10:30 AM

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