The first time I got in touch with a software engineering process was at university. I am amazed, but very happy that that experience did not diminish my interest in software engineering processes. As you can guess, we were obliged to follow a very heavyweight process (probably one of the most extreme), that the university lend from the European Space Agency (ESA). In retrospect, it might have been one of the most educational of the practical experiences I went through in my years at the university. But while we were undergoing the project, it certainly didn’t feel that way. We tried to deliver quality software, stuck with that malicious standard that did more harm than good. In the end we spent 80% of our time on writing a pile of specification documents stretching many centimeters in height, which we ‘archived’ in a drawer somewhere, leaving us with only 20% of our time left to actually deliver a product.
I kept on thinking that there must be another way, where you do write specifications, that actually help you in the process of writing software, instead of simply following process. Continue reading ‘Software Specification — A Blessing In Disguise?’