Imagine you are about to go on a trip. Perhaps with your partner or some friends. You want to take the car into the woods, to a place you have never been. The vacation spot has a nice house with a pool and a barbecue. The woman you rent it from stocked the fridge with cold drinks. And they have water beds. And WIFI! IN THE WOODS!

Anyway, you get in your car and you begin to drive. Looking from your bedroom window, the direction of the house was more or less a bit to the left of the church and to the right of the shopping mall. So if you take your car and head in that direction then you are pretty sure that you will make it. Eventually, you just have to get there. How hard can it be?!

Midway through, the inevitable happens: You have no idea where you are, no idea where you have to go and you didn’t even bring fresh underwear because you packed nothing.

Would you go on a trip like that? I bet you don’t. At least not together with a partner or a friend. They would probably kill you. I would! 🤬

But why do software projects look like that? If you take a GPS that can reliably take you to a destination you’ve never been to before, you should use the “GPS” available for your software projects as well. That means specifications, risk and requirements management, architectural design documents, test set-ups and everything else that helps you on your way to your destination.

Otherwise, it’s just getting into your car without any idea of where you’re going.

Yours, Holger