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[Review] Specification By Example

19 Sep 0

[Review] Specification By Example

SpecificationByExample.com is a very good read with real-life examples of software projects executed by agile software development teams.

The Problem

The author, Gojko Adzic, explains why software projects fail. Software projects often fail as a result of a lacking of understanding of business goals by the software team writing the application; and on the other side of the coin, product owners (business owners) often lack the in-depth understanding required to create user stories for the software team.

7 Collaboration Philosophies

To solve the problem of communication and collaboration between the stakeholders of the software (product owners and end users) and the software designers/engineers, Gojko proposes that agile software teams and product owners collaborate and focus on these specific areas:

Deriving Scope from Goals
Specifying User Stories Collaboratively
Illustrating using examples
Refining the specifications through open discussions
Automating validation without changing specifications
Validating frequently (by drilling down to understand which piece of code does what and why)
Evolving a living documentation system over time

6 Real Life Success Stories

With 6 excellent real life examples of successful software projects ranging from high traffic consumer web applications to busy back office intranet software, SpecificationByExample.com is an excellent book and I would highly recommend it to product owners and software professionals who are keen to continually improve the quality of their software and their own understanding of product creation and innovation.

Build the Product Right, Build the Right Product

And to sum it all up, here's a clear and excellent visualization of why it is important to "build a product right" (Test Driven Development, Extreme Programming, Agile methodology etc) AND at the same time, "build the right product" (Specification by example):

Category: Product Management

Tagged as: agile extreme programming specifications test driven development user stories

[Review] Specification By Example