First, if you're a developer and you're not listening to HanselMinutes, you should be.

Having said that, show #90 with Dan Appleman is applicable to anyone in the software industry - developer or not. It's about Software Architecture, but it's really about a lot more than that. It's about the whole software life cycle from proposals to delivery, and the conversation is very interesting and engaging. So much so that I forwarded this particular episode on to a "higher up" at NuSoft to get his take.

Anyway, one of my key takeaways from the conversation was about the list of non-features - things that you specifically state that you will not deliver in your proposal. Why's that a good thing? Here's an example. If I put in a proposal that we would be building a billing system, that can be taken a lot of different ways. But if I add to that requirement that I won't be building any integration with a back end system, things get clearer. While you have to define the requirement better than I did, the more exclusions you put in, the more precise the requirement becomes - excluding features sometimes gives clients a better understanding of what they will get.

Anyway, it's a good, quick listen. 35 minutes I think - 1/2 that if you listen at double speed like I do.

Tags: HanselMinutes