>but only if one treats it as the first iteration of the program with the expectation that the initial documentation may well be thrown out. This point really

>but only if one treats it as the first iteration of the program with the expectation that the initial documentation may well be thrown out. This point really hints at there being some other facotr at play. I agree that writing documentation first is fine, but in the same way writing some bad code is fine. I'd argue that the most important thing you can do to increase your chance of success is getting to the details as fast as possible. Do everything you can to get out of nebulous "big idea" mode and get into "we have this, what exactly are we changing about it" mode. If you write documentation or code doesn't matter.