The first thing I have to explain to business people when they're trying to give me requirements is that there are two kinds of "never". There's the business/real-world never, and then there's developer never. What regular people usually mean when they say never is "not very often".
In order to get the point across, and to clarify what people want when they say "never", I explain the repercussions: "Okay, you say this never happens. Is it okay if the program asks the user to contact support and then exits if it does happen?" That tends to get us to the right answer pretty quickly.
Trickier is "always". It has the same problem of being far more precice in software than it is in English. What's worse is that it's often implied or inferred in an otherwise reasonable requirement. "The software will send an email when an order is placed." Is that an always statement? Asking this question can be very illuminating. Typical responses can be "Well, not if there's been a problem -- then we want to call." or "Yes, if they've given us an email address".
No comments:
Post a Comment