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The people who come up with the spec don't fully know what is required. It's even worse than that actually; the requirements change constantly to account for ch

The people who come up with the spec don't fully know what is required. It's even worse than that actually; the requirements change constantly to account for changes in the technological and business environment within which the project exists. I think this is a bit of an overstatement, because it implies an often unrealistic separation between writing specs and writing implementations. There may be several levels of each, and the middle levels may overlap. For example, it may well be the case that the management on a project don't get heavily involved with the technical details and just specify "A needs to communicate with B" as part of the high level requirements. That doesn't mean the technical people responsible for implementing those requirement won't specify detailed protocols at a lower level and wouldn't benefit from formal methods to help ensure correct implementation.

gaius 8y ago
think this is a bit of an overstatement, because it implies an often unrealistic separation between writing specs and writing implementations Every government IT project that is years late and billions over budget is because of this
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Every government IT project that is years late and billions over budget is because of this Well, that used to seem to be true before governments started experimenting with (methodologies which were notionally versions of) Agile, Lean, and related ideas. Then there were a whole new set of reasons for IT projects being years late and over budget.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  False. Writing a waterfall-style “spec” on paper has nothing to do with formal methods.
  - gaius 8y ago
    It absolutely does. We studied SSADM in college.
kiriakasis 8y ago
> it implies an often unrealistic separation between writing specs and writing implementations I think that part of the problem is that small modification in the spec can lead to enormous changes in the proofs

gaius 8y ago

think this is a bit of an overstatement, because it implies an often unrealistic separation between writing specs and writing implementations Every government IT project that is years late and billions over budget is because of this

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Every government IT project that is years late and billions over budget is because of this Well, that used to seem to be true before governments started experimenting with (methodologies which were notionally versions of) Agile, Lean, and related ideas. Then there were a whole new set of reasons for IT projects being years late and over budget.
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
False. Writing a waterfall-style “spec” on paper has nothing to do with formal methods.
- gaius 8y ago
  It absolutely does. We studied SSADM in college.

kiriakasis 8y ago

> it implies an often unrealistic separation between writing specs and writing implementations I think that part of the problem is that small modification in the spec can lead to enormous changes in the proofs