Right---I worked there as an intern program manager this summer, and part
of my job was to write specs. So there are actually 3 kinds of specs that
get put into each feature: the product spec (feature interface and what it
does and its purpose), the design spec (actually architecture and
technical issues), and the test design spec. The specs are usually very
out of date and between the white papers that actually describe what the
end product does and how to use it, and the specs the products originated
from, there are frequently many gaps.
Have there been any studies on the document workflow around software
development? Or maybe how group/organizational behavior influence the
structure, quality, and methodologies programmers use?
Jinger Zhao
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jyzhao/contact.shtml
"If all you can do is what you've always done, then all you can be is
what you are right now." ~ Unknown
"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better." ~ Albert Camus
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Frank Wales wrote:
> Ruven Brooks:
> > I also wonder how big the spec would be if cast in a formal notation - an order of
> > magnitude larger?
>
> Well, it would be a pretty lousy notation that didn't allow for abstraction and
> meta-descriptions to cut things down a bit -- unless there are no two parts of
> the product sufficiently similar to benefit from this, in which case good luck
> writing the user documentation.
>
> > The size of this spec and of other specs raises an interesting issue. The
> > underlying model, going back to the
> > early 70's, is that people writing the code will be given a specification that
> > tells them exactly what code to
> > write and, therefore, need to understand little or nothing of the application for
> > which they are writing the code.
>
> Where I work, we call these people 'compilers'.
>
> > Of course, in fairness to Microsoft, one needs to ask is this really one
> > specification or is it a collection of
> > specifications that can be understood in isolation - is it one novel or is it more
> > like the Harry Potter series?
>
> The article actually states that there are about 4,000 individual specs, each of
> between 30 and
> 50 pages, which, taken together, specify the product. I take this to be a
> generalisation of the
> real position, since at least some features in Office are clearly much more complex
> than others.
>
> Despite this weight of spec, the article also states that Microsoft still gives its
> developers
> a lot of leeway for improvisation twixt spec and code, because "they're smart
> people."
> --
> Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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