[njacobs5074]

My experience with this issue has correlated highly with poorly written specs and/or stories (or worse, none at all). This in turn usually means that someone in the team is being lazy about the work to be undertaken.

I get it - writing good specs and stories is hard work. But as a way of organizing and "guard-railing" work, they are priceless. If you can't explain in words the work that needs to be done and share and socialize that, you're not ready to start building the product.

I can count on one hand, literally, the number of engineers I've worked with who could magically craft an amazing product out of thin air and even then, there were parts of those codebases that were horrifyingly difficult to modify down the road.