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

My customers have generally behaved as if they do know exactly what they
want from the beginning.  Not knowing WHAT they do not know might not be a
mistake, but not knowing THAT they might not know is a common mistake.

Of course, I have worked with many subject matter experts, product managers
and developers who also make that exact same mistake.

On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 10:26 AM <[email protected]> wrote:

> Problematic interactions (and miscommunications) are only part of the
> "people problems".  There are outright mistakes, misconceptions, conflicts
> of interests, politics, etc.
>
> In my experience (which is pretty much business application software so
> may not apply elsewhere) this seems like an odd characterisation of the
> problem of developing software. I'm not saying it is false, just it seems
> that "mistakes" are an odd way to think about it.
>
> I would say the primary problem is that people have tacit knowledge of
> what they want the software to do, but computers need this knowledge to be
> explicit. So the problem is "getting from tacit knowledge to explicit
> knowledge in the most effective way", and the most effective way includes
> having some feedback loops. Someone having tacit but not explicit knowledge
> doesn't really feel like a "mistake". Yes, people may make mistakes too,
> and problematic interactions (and miscommunications) may cause issues etc.
> etc., but fundamentally it is the fact that writing software involves
> turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, which in turn requires
> discovery, that makes TDD useful.
>
> Not sure if the distinction is important though!
> 
>
>

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