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the one thing that is keeping them from being successful is that they don't do 100% of the design upfront. No one can, technical or nontechnical. Spec-and-imp

• bcl 18y ago
  Exactly. That's why Open Source (Release Early, Release Often) and Agile (iterative) development works so much better. Get the users using the system/site/whatever and build on their feedback.
• Alex3917 18y ago
  "Spec-and-implement doesn't work." Spec-and-implement only has two parts, creating a spec and getting the spec implemented. Which part doesn't work? I'd readily admit that it's not possible to create a web startup based on a single iteration, but I think it can be one box on a much larger PERT chart.
  • nostrademons 18y ago
    Creating the spec. All specs are buggy - they don't spec something out fully, or they spec it and it's wrong when you put it in front of users, or they specify two features that when you try to combine them really don't work well. You can only discover these problems by trying them, because there're basically infinite ways to fail. If you rack your brains trying to think of everything that could possibly go wrong with your spec, you'll inevitably get bitten by something you didn't think of.
    • Alex3917 18y ago
      "All specs are buggy" So then you start out with a buggy implementation. This could either create vastly more work in the long run, or it could be a huge head start. It all depends on your product, the resources you have available, your sticking points, etc. But there are too many successful examples, like Digg and Squidoo, to completely write off the model entirely.