Over the years I think I have heard every excuse going for not producing design documentation. Here is a short list:
Delivery is required now so the sooner I begin coding, the better.Its more agile to not write docs The document will quickly drift out of synch with the code very quickly We can always produce it later, if we have to. Hey who looks at design documents anyway Its in the the code comments anyway I’m paid to write software, not technical documents The customer wants working software, not documents No one made me do it on my previous projects Everyone on the team knows how the system is designed, thats all the matters A good design will emerge once we begin coding we don't need to waste time nowIt's on the white board I comment the source code thoroughly - its as good as a ny docs you'll produceYou can’t really understand how the software will work until you write the code But what all this meant really was :
'I hate writing documentation'
So are there any real arguments...I'll cover this in part 2!