Comments on: The scourge of Document Driven Design http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/ For more than a decade Marc has been a passionate advocate of placing the customer at the heart of business, working with clients in finance, retail, government and entertainment sectors, helping them craft compelling cross channel customer experiences. Marc champions lean and agile approaches for making customer driven innovation happen. He brings design thinking and creativity to clients, engaging across the organisation with a focus on delivery as well as ideas. He is currently writing a book on Agile Experience Design to be published this Autumn. Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:33:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Jon http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/comment-page-1/#comment-174862 Jon Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:33:07 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/#comment-174862 This is old, but because it's indexed so highly on Google, it's important to post this: Dear blog author, Please learn English. "Document" does not solely imply the use of "words" alone. Your premise is faulty and therefore your entire post is based on a misunderstanding of a basic concept and can be disregarded. Pictures, diagrams, and everything in between, are also "documents". A document is form of communication committed to "paper" (or disk, in the case of electronic communication). Wikipedia seems to agree. This is exactly why DDD is so powerful, because it's not just about words, but about all documents. If they just meant words, they would have called it "Text Driven Design". Again, please fact check your terminology before spewing your opinion so irresponsibly on the internet. This is old, but because it’s indexed so highly on Google, it’s important to post this:

Dear blog author,

Please learn English. “Document” does not solely imply the use of “words” alone. Your premise is faulty and therefore your entire post is based on a misunderstanding of a basic concept and can be disregarded.

Pictures, diagrams, and everything in between, are also “documents”. A document is form of communication committed to “paper” (or disk, in the case of electronic communication). Wikipedia seems to agree. This is exactly why DDD is so powerful, because it’s not just about words, but about all documents. If they just meant words, they would have called it “Text Driven Design”.

Again, please fact check your terminology before spewing your opinion so irresponsibly on the internet.

]]> By: A A picture tells a thousand words. So prioritize pictures not words | dancingmango http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/comment-page-1/#comment-130101 A A picture tells a thousand words. So prioritize pictures not words | dancingmango Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:56:26 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/#comment-130101 [...] That didn’t take long did it, and it looks like an initial release candidate. We’ve defined our scope in a way that we do not believe we can cut any more.  Any less functionality would not be a meaningful release.  Now we can get down to writing the stories, focusing our effort on something we are agreed looks right.  We’ve prioritized pictures, outcomes over words; Picture Driven Design. [...] [...] That didn’t take long did it, and it looks like an initial release candidate. We’ve defined our scope in a way that we do not believe we can cut any more.  Any less functionality would not be a meaningful release.  Now we can get down to writing the stories, focusing our effort on something we are agreed looks right.  We’ve prioritized pictures, outcomes over words; Picture Driven Design. [...]

]]> By: Prashant Gandhi http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/comment-page-1/#comment-82777 Prashant Gandhi Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:08:18 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/#comment-82777 All the crows that I have seen are black. Hence, all crows must be black. Yes, empirical evidence does point to "picture saying a thousand words" and I do think its true. But one must not disregard the power of written word. You and I write using words. Your blog is a set of words, not pictures. People still read it. Just as you can have badly written documents, you can have badly drawn diagrams as well and they can be equally frustrating. The difference, if you like, lies in the ability of the author to address his/her audience. And I dont even think pictures are the best medium. I find that videos and audios are probably more powerful medium to capture important concepts. Would you go through a powerpoint deck with pictures or look at a 3 minute video with commentary from the SME where they explain a difficult concept ? All the crows that I have seen are black. Hence, all crows must be black.

Yes, empirical evidence does point to “picture saying a thousand words” and I do think its true. But one must not disregard the power of written word. You and I write using words. Your blog is a set of words, not pictures. People still read it. Just as you can have badly written documents, you can have badly drawn diagrams as well and they can be equally frustrating.

The difference, if you like, lies in the ability of the author to address his/her audience. And I dont even think pictures are the best medium. I find that videos and audios are probably more powerful medium to capture important concepts. Would you go through a powerpoint deck with pictures or look at a 3 minute video with commentary from the SME where they explain a difficult concept ?

]]> By: Vijay Patel http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/comment-page-1/#comment-81728 Vijay Patel Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:23:40 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2008/07/22/the-scourge-of-document-driven-design/#comment-81728 Marc, Have to agree on the sentiment. Document Driven Design can seriously knock agile projects out of kilter (especially when the client changes their mind about what they originally wrote! I don’t think developers like surprises…) I always used pictures to convey ideas, and came to this realisation: it's the *motion* of drawing arrows and boxes that helps people understand; not always the drawing itself. I sometimes find myself re-drawing the same picture for different audiences. Making these processes interactive always yields the best results. In fact, our Domain Modeling tool was created to end this scourge  Cheers. Vijay Marc,

Have to agree on the sentiment. Document Driven Design can seriously knock agile projects out of kilter (especially when the client changes their mind about what they originally wrote! I don’t think developers like surprises…)

I always used pictures to convey ideas, and came to this realisation: it’s the *motion* of drawing arrows and boxes that helps people understand; not always the drawing itself. I sometimes find myself re-drawing the same picture for different audiences. Making these processes interactive always yields the best results.

In fact, our Domain Modeling tool was created to end this scourge 

Cheers.
Vijay

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