Ron Jeffries made an excellent point tonight on the Extreme Programming list:
I’d wager that your company has a number of practices around the
topic of “change control”, and terms in its contracts regarding
change. If I won that wager, I’d then ask: why do you have those
practices and terms if you really believe that you’ll get all the
requirements up front. With luck, after that, we’d all be
“enlightened”.
It was one of those AHa! moments for me. Why do we push so hard for rigidity and deadlines, and have elaborate change controls in place? Almost makes you wonder if it is just a self-fulfilling prophecy – havign change controls in place leads to the team using them. Of course, I know and have seen the reverse to be true – requirements are going to change. The customer doesn’t know what they want, and won’t know until you deliver what they don’t.
So who are we kidding, really?