Wednesday 13 November 2013

Specification and Risk

When using a general purpose library for a specific application, we generally only use a tiny subset of the functionality that the library provides. As a result, it is often reasonable to wrap that library in a simplified, special-purpose API, tailored to the specific needs of the application under development. This simplifies the interface, and in reducing the number of ways that it can be used, we also reduce the number of ways that it can go wrong, reducing the cognitive burden on the developer, simplifying the system, and reducing both cost and risk.

In this way, a restriction in what we expect the system to do results in a beneficial simplification; reduced costs and reduced risk.

It is possible to go too far with this, though, and there are two deleterious effects that immediately spring to mind:

Firstly, there is the obvious risk of a bug in the specification - that proposed restrictions may be inappropriate or incompatible with the primary task of the system, or with the political needs of various stakeholders.

Secondly, and more insidiously, there is the risk that excessive restrictions become positive specification items; moving from "the system does not have to handle X" to "the system must check for X and explicitly error in this way". Whilst this seems ridiculous, it is a surprisingly easy psychological trap to fall into, and, of course, it increases system complexity and cost rather than reducing it.

Consistently being able to strike the right balance is primarily a function of development organisation culture; and another reason why businesses need to pay attention to this critical (but frequently overlooked) aspect of their internal organisation.

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