http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660I recently attended a session of gathering and documenting requirements. The presenter was from a traditional/waterfall background. After the presentation was over, I had the strong impression that the specifications had little to with valuable software and everything to do with CYA. http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment8http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment8Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:41:16 GMTI once had to read a spec with 1.500 pages. I had to think of the poor writers all the time. Otherwise I would've gone mad. Gee, what a waste of time and money... http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment7http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment7Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:23:44 GMTI get specs with screenshots all the time. What's so strange/wrong about that? The business analysts generally come up with a feature and either dummy up some HTML to make it look like they want, or photoshop in the elements they need. http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment6http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment6Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:20:16 GMTThe "Blob" sounds a bit like a "God Class" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_object I recall seeing it discussed quite a bit in "Object Oriented Design Heuristics", and how to avoid it of course :-) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020163385X?ie=UTF8&tag=tobinharrisho-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=020163385X @Bryan Tidd That's hilareous! @Ayende So what makes a good spec in your opinion? http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment5http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment5Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:14:06 GMTThis one actually does have screen shots, visio ones. http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment4http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment4Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:01:22 GMTI saw a spec yesterday that had screen shots. I had to ask myself - how'd they do that. The asnwer was that they wrote the spec after writing the app. It was apparently easier that way. Specs are required for all apps, they just didn't tell this group which order they were due in. http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment3http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment3Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:59:12 GMThttp://www.antipatterns.com/briefing/sld024.htm http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment2http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment2Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:24:43 GMTWhat's "the Blob"? http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment1http://ayende.com/2673/on-spec-reading#comment1Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:13:10 GMT