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by scandox 54 days ago
All through the agile era I wrote detailed specs for projects and then followed an agile process. The most successful parts of every project were the ones that we were able to spec best even when they diverged significantly from the original spec.

You don't plan to follow the plan. You plan in order to understand the whole problem space. Obviously no plan survives contact with reality.
3 comments
Yokohiii 54 days ago
> You plan in order to understand the whole problem space.

I like to do spikes to understand problem spaces before planning. The planning is then usually effortless and just to get in sync with stakeholders.

But in that regard AI coding is really backwards. We don't necessarily need hard separation of planning and coding, but we need a deliberate separation of experimental/explorative coding and the code that is supposed to make it into prod. AI coding does all that in the same place, I don't even want to know how hard it is to "fix" AI code that started on behalf of a completely wrong premise. AIs certainly don't have a good measure when to refactor something completely messed up.

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kaffekaka 53 days ago
> We don't necessarily need hard separation of planning and coding, but we need a deliberate separation of experimental/explorative coding and the code that is supposed to make it into prod. AI coding does all that in the same place ...

This is a very good point. The AI speedup some PMs fantasize about is skipping planning and instead generate code directly from end user discussions, POC-ing our way into shipping.

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fsloth 54 days ago
Agree!

Another point of view is that LLM:s perform to an extent on the same level as outsourcing does. This interface requires a bit more contract mass than doing everything within single team.

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chrisweekly 54 days ago
"Plans are worthless, but planning is essential."
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kaffekaka 53 days ago
Pointless nit, but replace "essential" with "invaluable" for a play with words.
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chrisweekly 53 days ago
I like wordplay too, but in this case it'd have risked muddling the lone point I was making. Doubling down on tangents, since you like wordplay I bet you'd enjoy https://tiledwords.com/ which has been posted on HN a couple times.
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