Hello Modern Analysts,

By now you ave all heard of Agile software development.  you are probably ware that there are several frameworks and processes that fall within the umbrella of Agile, and some of them are quite distinct from one another.

One of the common themes in agile software discussions is the idea of emergent design and emerging requirements.

The simple idea is this: You can't know everything up front.  Also, things change and so in a 24 month or even 6 month project business needs have shofted since the beginning of the project.  Development teams should accomodate this.  And lastly (this is the theme of the question) planned design usually does no better than unplanned design.

I need to qualify this - I am excluding super large, national, cross organisational or international projects from this discussion.  Those babies are way complex and need a whole new set of rules beyond what agile can provide.

Now - back to the question;

Have you got an opinion on the premise that emergent design works as well as planned design?  Have you got a story about emergening design/requirements working or failing?

Please share.

Guy

I am interested in the point at which the requirements failed.  At the system specification level or at the business knowing what they wanted level?

My hunch is the latter. Or if not, then the project team not bothering to find ot the business context and goals.

Guy

What I mean here is - Are the business requirements & project scope/goals okay, aligned to strategy, sensible, practical etc?

Or is the system spec too complicated and too full of constraints?  Is the systejm specifiaction disassociated from the business objectives?

At which of these two scenarios are we most likely to find critical requirement failure?