[pdonis]

> Just design the software upfront for what you will need

That assumes that you know upfront what you will need and what software design will best meet the need. Sometimes that is the case, but many times it isn't. Different strategies are needed to deal with the latter case.

[jayd16]

If you need flexibility for unknowns, design for that. Specialize as the requirements become more clear.

[pdonis]

That assumes that you know the unknowns and how to design for the flexibility you will need. That won't always be the case. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you don't know enough up front to make a good design, so your initial efforts need to be focused at gaining the information you need, for example by prototyping to get user feedback knowing that you will probably throw some prototypes away, not making design decisions up front that you don't have the information to make.

[jayd16]

We agree. I just phrased it as design and plan for project flexibility, not design a bunch of knobs strictly for every case you happen to know about at some snapshot in time.

I say design and not just plan because you'll want to mock out or prototype something to show and that does take design work to keep your iteration cadence high.

In my mind flexible means easy to iterate on but maybe that is not clear.