Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Business Rules Curmudgeon

Its been a while since my last post, in that time my wife and I have had a baby boy who was born in the 9th of June.

Something that I have been pondering for a while is how to reduce the number of small business rules that seem to creep into requirements. Taken individually these seem minor but as they add up you find yourself maintaining dozens of different small rules that in aggregate are complex. This is particularly the case where you have a feature that grows over time and you steadily add more pieces to it.

The part I struggle with is how to say no to these things without sounding like a curmudgeon. The upfront development cost is usually small but when multiplied out across analysis, testing and training materials. I haven't really worked out a way around this, small tasks will disappear within estimates and people often become fixed on their vision and persuading them that it is wrong is difficult or impossible.

Perhaps its time to embrace being a curmudgeon.