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> There's nothing Agile about having a chat between A and B, sitting at a keyboard, and spending money. That's just cowboy coding Nowhere did I suggest having

> There's nothing Agile about having a chat between A and B, sitting at a keyboard, and spending money. That's just cowboy coding Nowhere did I suggest having the conversation was the entire process. I am merely rejecting the notion that a story is a spec. I believe there should be no concept of spec at all. There should be a story, a conversation, and then acceptance criteria (which should ideally be defined in code, not a document)

ssmoot 12y ago
So you would write functional acceptance tests, and the only thing written down is a Story. If all goes well, maybe you have a happy client at the end of that. If they're OK with costs and time being potentially an order-of-magnitude off. Most people outside of the software world aren't. Most people outside of the software world use specs. I feel like if there were a better, more reliable way to build something, anything, it would be common. But wether it's a car, a house, a boat, a bridge, a road, a piece of furniture or a motion film, that's not the way it works generally. If you want repeat business anyways. I feel like resounding success without specs is the exception. At least it's always been that way in my career. The less planning effort, the less success. The correlation is so strong IME that it's basically like saying fire is hot. As someone whose dealt with independent contractors for house work, it really sucks for a client to not know the what, for how much and when. I've never met a client that objected to nailing those down (within reason) before I started sending over invoices for Developer hours.
- dansingerman 12y ago
  In my experience people buying software value working software that meets their business requirements within the agreed budget over anything else. In twenty years I have never known a written specification help achieve that, and it has often hindered it. I guess your experience differs, but I focus on delivering software my clients love, and so far that has never failed to work.

ssmoot 12y ago

So you would write functional acceptance tests, and the only thing written down is a Story. If all goes well, maybe you have a happy client at the end of that. If they're OK with costs and time being potentially an order-of-magnitude off. Most people outside of the software world aren't. Most people outside of the software world use specs. I feel like if there were a better, more reliable way to build something, anything, it would be common. But wether it's a car, a house, a boat, a bridge, a road, a piece of furniture or a motion film, that's not the way it works generally. If you want repeat business anyways. I feel like resounding success without specs is the exception. At least it's always been that way in my career. The less planning effort, the less success. The correlation is so strong IME that it's basically like saying fire is hot. As someone whose dealt with independent contractors for house work, it really sucks for a client to not know the what, for how much and when. I've never met a client that objected to nailing those down (within reason) before I started sending over invoices for Developer hours.

dansingerman 12y ago
In my experience people buying software value working software that meets their business requirements within the agreed budget over anything else. In twenty years I have never known a written specification help achieve that, and it has often hindered it. I guess your experience differs, but I focus on delivering software my clients love, and so far that has never failed to work.