Re: S/W doc question (kinda long)

["Misti Tucker USAET(UTC -04:00)" <mtucker2 -at- E-MAIL -dot- COM>]

Kim Cramer said:
> Currently, I'm having the same difficulties.  We just acquired a
> competitor and their client/server product has replaced our previous
> product.  A decision was made that they would not follow our company's
> standard procedures (which involve actually planning and documenting
> what will be in a release) so that they could get the code out the door
> quickly.  Of course, the code has been delayed several months because,
> as there was no planning, the developers just kept coding.  Code


The situation you describe reminds me of a rule of thumb I learned in one
of my first programming classes:

"A well written software application, complete with research, planning,
functional specification, and documentation, will take approximately 3 times
longer than planned to reach a state acceptable to management and the end-user.

A software application developed without these things will take between five
and one hundred times as long as planned and will never reach a state where it
is satisfactory to both management and the end-user."

Misti Tucker
Technical Communication                 mta -at- cyberspace -dot- org  (h)
& Help System Design                    mtucker2 -at- e-mail -dot- com (w)

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