Deniability and Software–Ouch!

Posted by Robert Merrill on April 26, 2010 under Software-Intensive Businesses, Waterfall (SDLC) | Be the First to Comment

I’ve long told my customers that big waterfall software specs are more like insurance policies than blueprints, especially when I hear the phrase “sign-off” more than once a week. They are part of Covey the Younger’s Trust Tax.

But in Deniability, Seth Godin puts it better that I ever could. “At some point, that effort [anticipatory CYA] becomes so great you never actually ship anything, which of course is the very best protection against failure.”

Ouch!