Yes way. Today.. I wrote a spec. I'm dragging my poor coworkers kicking and screaming into the right direction. No one specifically has a problem with specs, they just believe there is no time to write them. I disagree. Strongly! I have wasted an inordinate amount of time working on projects that because they have no spec, we've constantly been asking questions, and making plain old guesses as to how they are supposed to work. Sadly my guesses (although often well informed) are only correct about 50% of the time (this is not a statistical number, just a .. well.. a guess).
To be honest I enjoy writing specs. I know.. weird huh? I find as I start the document, I start to see the pages and the code grow in my head. I can work through things I just know are not going to work right then and there as I type. Writing the technical spec is usually where I work through most of the thornier problems, and I get it down to pseudo code, it just appears in my head! I like to have everyone in the team review the spec once it's completed (I send it out pretty much as is, without any real proofing) and those who actually read it give me all the feedback I need (typo here, rename this thing, what is this?).
Today I wrote a spec, and those that read it (the important people) worked out we were seeing the problem completely differently.. and the design was going to be wildly different from the back end. What a relief to work this out now!! I know I'd saved at least a small amount of time, and that made the fact my fingers hurt from typing, totally worthwhile.
BFN
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