Warp wrote:
>   First the programmer is given a basic ascetic description of the program,
> and the programmer makes a small prototype. Then new ideas start pouring in,

Yes, this exactly.

And worse, the request comes from a customer who "will buy it if we put this 
in."  But it takes three weeks to put it in, and the customer waits 2 weeks 
and changes their mind, because the customer didn't really want to buy it 
anyway but didn't want to tell the pushy salesman to go stuff it.

So you not only have a whole bunch of bags on the side (which is the old 
timer's name for such features), but you have a whole bunch of bags half of 
which are leaking.

I can't even say how many projects I've worked on that weren't even spec'ed 
out enough for the person asking for the project to realize it's impossible 
to implement.  Stuff like sample reports with amounts and totals marked as 
"$XXX.XX" in the example, with calculations that mean the grand total at the 
bottom right can't be both the sum of the column above and the sum of the 
row to the left.

>   Thus the project advances. What started as a small, lean&clean prototype,
> with nice little modules and functions, starts slowly but steadily growing,

I *did* work in one place briefly once, where each project timeline would be 
estimated based on "is this a one-off, or a production system? Are you 
asking this question once, or will you ask again."  Asking once might take a 
week to code, while asking in production would take six to eight weeks.

The cool thing was, after the one-off, you ran the program, took it to the 
person that asked for it, and if they approved, you got them to sign off on 
the timesheet. Then you went back and deleted the code.

When they come back the next month and say "I need that report again", you 
get to say "It'll take a week this time also."

That was back when managers didn't think they could dictate development times.

Nowadays, where I work, nobody even starts writing the spec until after 
they've decided when the feature will be released. I kid you not.


Only occasionally have I managed to convince a boss it'll be faster to 
rewrite this from scratch than it will be to add the feature you're asking for.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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