Richard Sargent wrote > One of the most important skills you will ever develop is to understand > that a request for a feature may not be accurately describing the problem. > A feature request is often a description of a problem from a single > perspective. Learning to recognize whether it is one or the other will be > crucial to your long-term success as a programmer.
Well put. I would add a couple of others: Being able to interpret & re-interpret feature requests, given that they are often poorly and incompletely specified; this requires closing the loop with the customer to ensure that your mutual understanding is spelled out clearly and agreed to. Another is being able to skillfully negotiate feature and implementation details with the customer to arrive at a requirements specification that not only satisfies the customer's needs, but also specifies a system that you can actually implement -- given the allotted schedule & budget and the capabilities of your tools and team (which of course includes your own know-how). -t -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
