One can write ( 2 + 2 = 5 ) on a piece of paper and get away with it; however if ( 2 + 2 ) is given to a well functioning calculator the answer is always 4.

It is amazing that many ignore this very basic principal. Marketing associates and Product Developers create specifications on Paper and if they don’t have an Information Architect on their team they are well capable of making deadly logical mistakes because papers don’t give you errors no matter how wrong you are.

Specifications find their way to the Technology department. Technology Department wants to keep everybody happy at all costs, so members do not question what is given to them. Instead they bend backwards to find workarounds, hacks and sometimes create the illusion that things are working. By doing such an approach, they end up doing additional hours of work to produce a buggy, duck-taped, spaghetti and meatball application that becomes the enterprise software.

There is unfortunately a common misconception among people that computers are unruly entities and all softwares are always buggy anyway. In other words there is a high tolerance for mediocre quality software.

Mistakes on top of mistakes … end user is the one who loses
In fact everybody loses

It would be better if Marketing and Product Development team include System Analysts and Information Architects on their team and invite them to their meetings, so business flow bugs can be spotted and resolved before they find their way to the specifications.

Technology department team should consider that Marketing and Product development people are human too and capable of making mistakes; so if there are any logical flaws in the specification, instead of bending backwards to find a workaround, they better challenge and discuss the issues with the stakeholders and let them know that: What works on paper doesn’t neccessarily make logical sense to the computers, or real life.

When there is good communication and common sense, everybody wins.

Rastin