Out Of The Mouths Of Clients

[tomtomagain]

Talking to one of the third party suppliers, trying to get a grasp of the documentation etc for the client (kinda knew the answer as I had been brought in to try and reign in some of the processes), asked about what happens if an error is found and a new version of code is created?

Word or word answer is:



I am not a BA or a Dev, but can anyone please tell me how is this even possible?!

I have gone back and asked how do they know what to build, but I am scared of the answer to be fair!

What they mean is:

"The contract says that we only have to deliver the documents at the end of the development phase and therefore that is what we are going to do.

We may or may not have already created these documents but regardless you are not getting your hands on them until the work is finished because we do not want to take any risk that you will challenge or change them.

Once we give them to you, they may or may not be correct. If they are correct, then that was our good work. If they are incorrect then that is your fault and we will charge you to correct them.

By withholding as much information as possible we minimise risk. Specifically the risk to ourselves that you may get some other competent party to review the documents and suggest a more effective and cheaper way of implementing the solution."

[tomtomagain]

PS. Agile does not mean "No Design". Agile means "No big upfront design".

[LondonManc]

You only need design docs for particularly hard to understand things. It's normal to produce technical documentation either at the end (or probably easier immediately after you've finished that part of the development).

The only solutions that I've seen that really NEED technical docs (apart from a few flow-charts to help the support guys, etc) are the ones that have been done really tulipty.

otherwise, why would you need them (for 95% of projects)?

Depends on the size and dynamic of the team.

Business user and business analyst engage to determine requirement, from which emerges a solution-agnostic BRD.
Business analyst and technical analyst engage to discuss requirement, from which emerges a functional-spec with solutions, costings, etc.
Functional spec signed off as BA translates geek to English for end user, advising the costs of the different solutions.
Solution picked, technical analyst, systems architect and developers engage to thrash out design document and/or tech spec.
Solution gets eventually delivered, by which time business user has lost interest or left the business.

[Antman]

I always thought that the BA became a bit of an extra wheel / layer of communication in the agile methodology, devs should be talking straight with the product owners.

[NickFitz]

The Source Code is the Design.

"What approach they choose doesn’t matter; until someone starts insisting that these intermediate designs should be products in their own right. It’s the code that matters. If you get good code, does it really matter how it came about? If you don’t get good code, does it really matter how much other garbage you made people do before they wrote the bad code?"

[LondonManc]

The Source Code is the Design.

"What approach they choose doesn’t matter; until someone starts insisting that these intermediate designs should be products in their own right. It’s the code that matters. If you get good code, does it really matter how it came about? If you don’t get good code, does it really matter how much other garbage you made people do before they wrote the bad code?"

Yeah, forget what the business actually wanted, let's just deliver something.

[vetran]

The Source Code is the Design.

"What approach they choose doesn’t matter; until someone starts insisting that these intermediate designs should be products in their own right. It’s the code that matters. If you get good code, does it really matter how it came about? If you don’t get good code, does it really matter how much other garbage you made people do before they wrote the bad code?"

the problem is you can't nail the jelly to the wall until you define the materials & quantities that make the Jelly & the wall.

[NickFitz]

Yeah, forget what the business actually wanted, let's just deliver something.

Not what it says at all. Not even slightly close. You didn't read it, did you?

[LondonManc]

Not what it says at all. Not even slightly close. You didn't read it, did you?

I responded to the quote, which I read. There, there, nearly the end of Monday.

[mudskipper]

Documentation? Pah, why do you think I'm into my 5th year at ClientCo?