[robocat]

Item 6 seems to contradict the first 5.

  6: Every project longer than a day must have an engineering plan, no exceptions. There is nothing more guaranteed to blow up a project than realizing weeks (or months in) that a requirement was missed. 

Apart from that it is a good start for a manifesto - just needs a meme handle (≈agile).

[benmcredmond]

Hi! Author here. The principles are roughly ordered from start -> end of a project, with the exception of the last. Principle 6 is specifically about how something is built, the preceding ones are about what to build. I can see how it could be a bit unclear.

[robocat]

Thanks! There's probably another article on the trade-offs between 6 and the other items.

Item 6 jumped out to me because many people would interpret it as waterfall process which doesn't appear to be what you are trying to encourage.

I liked how you put things in your article.

Aside: my personal definition of good engineering is making the right compromises.