War On Waterfall

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/10/anything-but-waterfall.html

Let's say you've a process that demands that developers write Functional Design Documents or produces Wireframes

 - Word docs, PDFs, Visios, Slideshows or just Plain Old Photoshop Files.

I mean demands as in 'Management says moar'.

What do you do?

Do you feel like your client and your customer are no longer the same person?

Do you feel like your liaison no longer has the shareholders interests at heart?

I do, and after many years of reading developer stories at c2, one day I decided to declare WarOnWaterfall

I started to provide estimates on documentation tasks.

Albeit I regard the waterfall artifacts as pseudo documents in any case.

The UnitTests and AcceptanceTests being well, you know, a bit more functional.

I created user stories like 'As an organization I want the team to create a Visio of the solution architecture so that...'

So that, hmmmmm....

"So that we can put it the Functional Design Document".

Anyway ... "1 week estimate", for the diagram only.

"People will be looking at it and discussing it, that takes time."

In the beginning the UserStories made it into the iteration, but after a while at the PlanningMeeting they started to get pushed into the backlog because you know...

When pushed, everyone would actually prefer the developer was coding.

All I'm trying to say is - you can do it too!

DavidCasey

PS: I have a smashing Visio of my SolutionArchitecture and I look at it all the time. It was worth every cent.