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4) sounds like a recipe for disaster if the product is large enough. Nobody can remember everything. Heck, I start writing a text document when something gets t
by ahartmetz 7y ago
4) sounds like a recipe for disaster if the product is large enough. Nobody can remember everything. Heck, I start writing a text document when something gets too big for myself.
- _betty_ 7y agoI find requirements start changing as soon as there is a conversation about them or a user interacts with a feature. This practice is just saving time writing down behaviour that won't be implemented.
- afarrell 7y agoBut if you don't have a few paragraphs of your assumptions written down, how do you keep the 3 other people aligned on your basic assumptions and direction? What do you do when people forget things?
- peteradio 7y agoYou artfully interrupt them and always keep watch on what other people are doing!
- _betty_ 7y ago4) Requirements are conveyed verbally, not through written documents. Stories are short "reminders to hold a conversation," not fully-fleshed out. There's still something written down, just not massive amounts. Personally i try break stories down smaller to avoid the need for large tasks which helps. I also try minimise the time between story creation and story development. Otherwise I just communicate a lot. Things get differently from what I invisioned, sometimes they're worse sometimes they're better.
- lazerwalker 7y agoAn answer there would likely be smaller teams. For context, when I was at Pivotal (on the consulting side, years ago) a team of 4-5 pairs would be considered quite large. Also a problem that's solved by the combination of pairing and frequent communication. You don't need full context on anything yourself, as long as the combination of you, your pair, and anyone you can grab within arms reach can fill in the blanks.
- lonelappde 7y agoWe invented books because human memory storage is phenomenally expensive. Why throw them awaym
- JJMcJ 7y ago"The dimmest ink is superior to the brightest memory" - so said Benjamin Franklin or maybe someone else.
- twic 7y agoHaving followed the process as described, i'd agree. If a project runs for more than a few months, you forget why decisions were made. I don't think XP in general has a great story about how to deal with this.
- technion 7y agoI'd be less worried about "forgetting" and forever worried about a manager just saying "you obviously forgot (something I just decided)". I mean it happens even when there's documentation I can pull up and say "well actually..", I'd hate to imagine otherwise.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoI love email for this. That way I can always pull up the email and say, "this is what we decided." I follow up all meetings with email(s).
- jacques_chester 7y agoYes, this is one of my pet peeves. Pivotal R&D has struggled with maintaining context. For multi-megaSLOC codebases with many moving parts, organic memory begins to fall a bit short. Different teams deal with this differently. Some write design notes, some keep architecture design records. But IMO it's one of our weaknesses.