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After creating software for almost 30 years, this is still true. But...it's not their fault. Asking anyone to precisely describe a complex system that is subje

After creating software for almost 30 years, this is still true. But...it's not their fault. Asking anyone to precisely describe a complex system that is subject to change will have the same problem(s). This is why Agile[0] was such a breath of fresh air. And Iterative Prototyping, MVP's, all that. It's massively easier and quicker to slap something together, put it in front of a customer and ask them what's wrong with it, than it is to ask them what they want in the first place. In my experience a quick "it should do this" is good enough to get that going, and then iterate from there. [0]Actual Agile. As in the Manifesto. Not this Scrum bullshit.

sumtechguy 6y ago
It is interesting to watch scrumm. I have seen it broken a few times now. Every single time it started off just fine. Then someone decides the process was more important instead of the intent. Then everyone just went along with it. Even worse someone knows they 'still dont like it' but keep tweaking it but making it worse instead of saying 'yeah that did not work at all'. Or my favorite is someone blows in and finds out you have been skipping one ritual (because it was low value to your team). Your team is then declared 'broken'. It is like there is some flaw in scrumm that allows for anti patterns.
kbenson 6y ago
> But...it's not their fault. Asking anyone to precisely describe a complex system that is subject to change will have the same problem(s). Yes. In the same breath someone might denigrate users for not knowing what they want and also explain about how they can't accurately timeline their personal coding project where they are the only user and developer. Designing any complex system is hard. Asking users to take part in that design process means asking them to do something hard (or at least that's hard if done well, and hard to tell you aren't doing well unless you put in that effort you didn't know you had to). Complaining about bad user requirements as fine, but truthfully it should be done in a way that's self deprecating...

sumtechguy 6y ago

It is interesting to watch scrumm. I have seen it broken a few times now. Every single time it started off just fine. Then someone decides the process was more important instead of the intent. Then everyone just went along with it. Even worse someone knows they 'still dont like it' but keep tweaking it but making it worse instead of saying 'yeah that did not work at all'. Or my favorite is someone blows in and finds out you have been skipping one ritual (because it was low value to your team). Your team is then declared 'broken'. It is like there is some flaw in scrumm that allows for anti patterns.

kbenson 6y ago

> But...it's not their fault. Asking anyone to precisely describe a complex system that is subject to change will have the same problem(s). Yes. In the same breath someone might denigrate users for not knowing what they want and also explain about how they can't accurately timeline their personal coding project where they are the only user and developer. Designing any complex system is hard. Asking users to take part in that design process means asking them to do something hard (or at least that's hard if done well, and hard to tell you aren't doing well unless you put in that effort you didn't know you had to). Complaining about bad user requirements as fine, but truthfully it should be done in a way that's self deprecating...