Is no spec process better than an overly detailed one?

The other day I was meeting with a company and was a bit shocked when they openly admitted to not writing specs. And before you ask, yes the company is rather successful and been in business for years – all without formalized a spec process. As a product manager I find it difficult to image, I’ve seen companies with an overtly detailed process before but none? Then I began to question, is it better to have no spec process or an overly detailed one?

I once worked for a very successful Internet company that also worked under the Waterfall model. This was my only experience working outside of an Agile shop and I can safely say that if you aren’t doing mission critical stuff, like building a plane, you should never use the Waterfall model. Any-who this company also had a very detailed spec process to go along with it. The Product Manager outlined the product, the Project Manager would translate that into a spec, it would then go to Engineering, etc. What you got at the end of it all was an engineering team that basically did paint by numbers. They only did what was asked and nothing more. They were more worried about covering their ass than pointing out faults with a spec. Of course saying that implies that they knew what we were building, I think most saw the numbers and simply painted. This is certainly not the Engineering team you want when building innovative products.

Compare that with an Agile company that works off of lite specs. Lite because they’re always changing and also because most people don’t read them fully (any part that is unread is wasted effort as Eric Ries points out and startups are about eliminating waste). So the spec is incomplete by its nature so everyone has to add to it in their own way. But how do you know what to add or not to add? That comes down to communication within the company, having a clear vision. Where as with the example above the responsibility was pushed to an all encompassing spec, with a lite Agile process the responsibility is shared with the spec and the communication within the company. With a company that doesn’t use a spec the responsibility must be all on the communication.

Of course adding a lite spec process to where there was none before can be helpful,  likely facilitating more communication. However changing the spec process at a company with a detailed process doesn’t yield much gain. If it’s been years you might have departments in serious atrophy as the one I had to work with. So I’d say no spec process is better than an overly detailed one.

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