Issues with Jobs and Purchase Orders.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/30/2017 8:54 AM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote:
> On 30 May 2017 at 12:26, Mike or Penny Novack 
> <stepbystepfarm at dialup4less.com 
> <mailto:stepbystepfarm at dialup4less.com>> wrote:

  I was not referring to meetings among the people 
designing/writing/testing the new software. I was referring to meetings 
(and testing by) USERS, those who will be using the software.

And I strongly disagree that those writing the software would know WHAT 
the software was supposed to do in the BUSINESS SENSE. They are not the 
people using "jobs" and "purchase orders" etc. in their business. Sure, 
in my days in the cypher mines I did plenty of software that was more or 
less just FOR the system (see what the system does now; make that 
better, faster, easier to modify safely, etc.). Or even writing tools to 
make writing special ad hoc programs of a type we did often easier to 
write. But this is different, more like the bigger projects providing a 
new feature wanted by the BUSINESS people to do what they needed to be done.

Look, in my working experience, the USERS begin with a vague/general 
idea of what they need. They do NOT (initially) see all the 
exception/rare cases the new system must handle. They do not start out 
thinking about "if I enter something wrong, what sort of error feedback 
do I get". I was talking about meetings to define the specifications 
from the business point of view.

If there are not well defined specifications for what a program is 
SUPPOSED to do, then as long as the program doesn't hang or loop it is 
correct. But won't be what the (business) customers wanted.

Michael D Novack, FLMI

<< and I suspect my idea of "a large program" might be different. Say 
100K to 500K lines?? >>