Re: Re Effectively building a complex object-oriented system WAS: Estimating Costs Up

Andrew McDonagh <news@andrewcdonagh.f2s.com> wrote in message news:<cj4v4p$v
7u$1@news.freedom2surf.net>...

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Andrew,

Good points.  I guess I think of a traditional construction metaphor
(don't know if it is a proper metaphor or not).  Let's say that I am
building a house.  I read all of my user stories up front and I know
that it will be a three story house.  So I make some rough plans and
estimates ahead of time and I feel pretty good because I have built
homes before.  We start off and build the first floor first.  Things
are going well, we are getting lots of feedback, making little changes
along the way.  Then I build the second floor and things are still
going well.  Then when it comes time to build the third floor we have
the developers sit down and get the detailed requirements for the
third floor (as we did for the other floors).  At that time we find
out that one of the people who will be living on this floor is in a
wheelchair so they need an elevator!!  Rats.  We have already built
two really nice floors with traditional stairs and now we will have to
rip up a lot of wood and stuff to install an elevator after the fact.
If only we had known this up front.  We would have done things
differently and it might have cost a lot less.  And now we are worried
how the changes that we will need to do to install the elevator will
affect the rest of the house.

We did know that we were going to have 3 floors but because we
deferred the details until we were ready to build the 3rd floor we are
screwed now.

I know this is a very extreme example - but is my point valid?  Or am
I just a big worry wart! :)

Thanks,
Corey