Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

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Wed, 02 Nov 2005

A thought, inspired by the CSS2 specification

Specifications are a tool for resolving disputes. They are not a communication or teaching tool.

Sentences in a specification are the tangible and checkable evidence that a dispute among specifiers has been resolved. The specification is also used as strong evidence when two programmers have an implementation dispute, or when a tester and a programmer do. But almost no one, given the option, would choose to learn CSS by reading the specification.

That suggests that a specification should not be written to a consistent level of precision. Precision is needed only where disputes have already occurred or are likely. You can be happy when politics and economics allow you to let all precision be driven by actual, rather than anticipated, disputes.

## Posted at 21:46 in category /misc [permalink] [top]

Three useful links

Here are three links I plan to point clients at:

• A concise description of the Fit workflow. (James Shore)

• An example of Fit as a tool for creating understanding. (James Shore)

• One of the understandings you create is the project's ubiquitous language. (Eric Evans)

## Posted at 21:46 in category /fit [permalink] [top]