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On 16 July 2014 03:57, Jay S. Bryant <jsbryant at electronicjungle.net> wrote:
> John,
>
> So you have said a few times that the specs are a learning process.
> What do you feel with have learned thus far using specs?

I'm not John, but I'm going to answer as if you'd addressed the question wider:
- Specs can definitely help flesh out ideas and are much better than
blueprints as a way of tracking concerns, questions, etc

- We as a community are rather shy about making decisions as
individuals, even low risk ones like 'Does this seem to require a
spec' - if there doesn't seem to be value in a spec, don't do one
unless somebody asks for one

- Not all questions can be answered at spec time, sometimes you need
to go bash out some code to see what works, then circle again

- Careful planning reduces velocity. No significant evidence either
way as to whether it improves quality, but my gut feeling is that it
does. We need to figure out what tradeoffs on either scale we're happy
to make, and perhaps that answer is different based on the area of
code being touched and the date (e.g. a change that doesn't affect
external APIs in J-1 might need less careful planning than a change in
J-3. API changes or additions need more discussion and eyes on than
none-API changes)

- Specs are terrible for tracking work items, but no worse than blueprints

- Multiple people might choose to work on the same blueprint in
parallel - this is going to happen, isn't necessarily rude and the
correct solution to competing patches is entirely subjective