I came across this nice discussion between Phlip and Juergen Ahthing in the
XP-ML
"Without test-first and refactoring, clients think
they must assemble as many program requirements as
they can afford to have written. This effort snarls
all relative business priorities together, making
Scope Control impossible. It obscures opportunities
for simplification. Designing and implementing many
features all at once is very hard, leading to our
industry's reputation for very large failures. Putting
tests in front of development's inner cycle permits an
outer cycle of incremental feature growth. That
relieves the Customer of the responsibility to predict
the future and guess which complete set of features
will maximize productivity."
.. Juergens answer:
Nice description.
Sometimes I try to explain that to non technical people
with the following picture:
If you have only one chance to get your wishes on a
list, it is like Christmas for a child. You make sure
you get every little wish on that list and hope for the best.
If you are sure that you can get your wishes on the list
at any time. You will just put the most important ones
there which come to your mind easily.
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