The 90% rule
Once again a few friends (in this case, Fabio Camara, and Andrew Delin, both in the same week :-) ) ask me why I haven't been blogging. It seems that every time we have a conversation, they point out it could easily have been made into a blog entry.
After some reflection on the issue, I realized that it is because I have not been applying the "90% rule" to blog publishing: 90% of the ideal quality is good enough for most readers. In fact, I have seen so many spelling errors in some blogs that even so continue to be taken as a good reference that the bar seems to be to be at 60% or maybe 50%.
The same analogy applies to requirements capturing, coding, or for that matter, any knowledge transformation activity. If it takes too long to produce some information to be consumed, when it is finally done in perfection it might no longer be relevant (although it is always possible to recycle an episode if we can extract its intrinsic timeless value - another way of saying that all experiences teach us).
Being stuck in such an endless loop situation in software development prompted the infamous "analysis paralysis". Agile teams have a way to deal with it in the formula YAGNI ("Ya Ain't Gonna Need It"), which helps you cut the cycle by focusing on why you are doing something. Which reminds me, I would better post this now, or I might never publish it once the never ending editing cycle starts.
I guess I have to apply the 90% rule more. However, my bar for spelling will continue to be 100%, or else I will put the blame on Word's spellchecker if something wrong passes through.
If only we could blame compilers for our business logic defects :-) ...
