Re: [extremeprogramming] The principle behind How Test-Driven Development Works

Any rigorous argument that does not start from the EXPLICIT axiom that the
requirements are not known until after there is concrete feedback from
appropriate stakeholders on working software that implement the current
best guess at those requirements will lead to the conclusion that some form
of waterfall is the most efficient way to develop software.

If the premise is that we can know M requirements correctly N days in
advance of delivering them, batches of size M implemented by enough teams
to deliver them in M days is the most efficient way to deliver those
requirements.

This is why, for example, despite totally Agile principles, SAfE devolves
into an unwieldy, bureaucratic, anti-agile mess due to concepts like the
COD, WSJF, and ART, all of which assume we know what a sizable batch of
requirements are before we get feedback on working software that implement
the current best guess at those requirements.

Software development is a people problem, not a technical problem.  If you
are explicit about the error-prone nature of human beings, it becomes
obvious that we need feedback as early and often as possible.  TDD provides
feedback early and often, especially if we commit only to working with the
customer on solving their problem rather than to a pre-specified solution
to that problem.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 1:26 PM J. B. Rainsberger <[email protected]>
wrote:

> The mathematics of the argument don't matter as much as the
> self-similarity of the argument. When they see Waterfall turn into Lean
> Startup, it's hard to argue against the value of incorporating feedback.
>
> What about the math literally argues for top-down pre-design? I've never
> seen that argument.
>
>
>

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