From ‘Getting Real‘ by 37signals;

“…success isn’t the only thing you’ll find in the details. You’ll also find stagnation, disagreement, meetings, and delays. These things can kill morale and lower your chances of success.”

“Forget about locked-in specs. They force you to make big, key decisions too early in the process. Bypass the spec phase and you’ll keep change cheap and stay flexible.”

If you haven’t read ‘Getting Real‘ I highly recommend it.

I greatly enjoy the book and appreciate much of the content, but I have to wonder if the “agile” attitude to design is so easily accepted because it encourages laziness. If planning is distasteful to you then saying, “Screw specs we don’t need em!” is extremely easy. It’s probably not beneficial though.

Saying specs are unnecessary and they prevent ‘agile’ work is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. A well thought out plan prevents problems. If you’re in an environment that says the spec is the golden rule which cannot be broken, then throwing out specs, for a while, may be a good idea.

If you find yourself constantly modifying features, encountering delays based on client expectations, or are in a continual state of crisis, it might be worth your time to develop some preventative maintenance.

Agile is defined as, ‘Being able to move quickly and easily.’ Agility can be achieved by a lack of planning, sometimes. Most of the time this is not the case. If you’ve got a development team that’s worked together for years, has some sort of a psychic mind meld, or you’re just one person working on a personal project, you may be able to launch faster without specifically defining your product.

However, if you’re working on a team without a telepathic connection, I’d recommend you take the next best route. Write out a game plan. If you don’t have someone who’s capable of writing a decent spec, hire one. Having a good plan will only enhance your agility.

Make the spec agile, change it when you need to. You’ll never be able to anticipate every issue that will arise in a project, but planning for what you can anticipate will save you from unnecessary deliberation and disagreement. Don’t sacrifice the agility that having a well written spec can provide, embrace it.

Here are several great articles to get you started.

Marshall is slightly crazy. You can read about his adventures in Europe at the incredibly entertaining LazyVoice.com