Drive By Analysis

The "Analysis Phase" of a WaterFall project. Characterized by guessing what all the external requirements will be, and what internal requirements derive from these.

Remember - the more you pump a customer up with a "formal analysis phase" followed by months of invisible tinkering, the more elated they will be to see all their dreams come true when you unveil the program after the BigBangTesting phase.

Every project, no matter how big or small, begins with analyzing someone's nebulous idea of "What The Customer Wants" and then "Giving The Customer What He Will Accept". There are no exceptions to this rule. One must negotiate this "Realm Of The Possible" even if "You Are Your Own Customer".

Therefore, on any project "Everybody Is A Customer" for "Someone Else's Product"

DBA is "analysis" (whatever that is) without feedback. Of course you start a project by interviewing the real customers to divine their wants. This is RequirementsAnalysis. But if, at "give the customer what he will accept" time, they actually >need< something different, you should not have to throw good money after bad to get there. RequirementsAnalysis continues incrementally thru the whole project, not all up front.

Can someone please revise the definition of DriveByAnalysis to reflect that analysis and test are the start and end of a process where the analysis proceeds in a TopDown fashion, while the testing proceeds in a BottomUp fashion. An example of a strategy similar to this incremental analysis idea is TestAsYouGo.

Anlysis and test are the start and end of ... (Oh never mind, just DesignCodeTest and, of course, TestAsYouGo ;-) -- SteveBravo

DriveByAnalysis also happens when a programmer has a question, calls up one user to get a response, analyzes how to handle various situations that arise, and then implements this in code. The problem with this approach is that it is an incomplete form of analysis favoring the preconceptions of the Programmer / Analyst and the perspectives of the single customer that was queried. Many developers still proceed with DriveByAnalysis because it is a faster way to code than to frequently HoldFocusSessions? and GetEverybodyInvolved?.

CategoryAnalysis