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On Spec Reading
time to read 1 min | 70 words
I feel like pushing someone through a window. I am reading a 200+ spec right now, and it is read exactly like a badly written combination of user documentation, wishful thinking and paper form specifications.
This is a spec that truly demonstrate that the Blob is not just a coding anti pattern. I literally have to reverse engineer it in order to figure out what I am supposed to do.
Comments
What's "the Blob"?
http://www.antipatterns.com/briefing/sld024.htm
I 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.
This one actually does have screen shots, visio ones.
The "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?
I 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.
I 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...
I 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.
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