Things you don't want to hear

Things you do not want to hear during a software project (unfortunately, all of the following were actually heard).

1. "Did anyone make a backup of the system this morning?"
2. "Should we make the error tracker an integer or a long?"
3. "I know that you have been telling us that we needed this. And, I know that we have been ignoring you, but we finally decided that you were right. Can we get that feature in before the deadline?"
4. "We can see that the error occurs to the user, but we cannot reproduce the error ourselves." (This error was later named 'Bigfoot' because no matter how many times it was seen, no one could prove it existed. Eventually, Bigfoot was found as an unusual and relatively rare combination of 5 distinct user actions.)
5. "We don't have time for testing." (Yes, you know how this ends).
6. "That won't take 5 minutes." (It took 5 minutes to walk to the user's desk).
7. "Now why does the 3 days you are working on this special rush project affect the deadline of the [product name deleted] release date?" (Honest. A highly paid executive asked this question. See Executive Fallacy above)
8. "I know that we completed testing on Friday. But, these were really very simple changes that I made on Saturday." (After the consultant arrived in Boston the following Monday to install the software and it failed to load.)

More Words

Good requirements will get you through a bad project plan. But, a good project plan will not get you rhrough bad requirements. (So, why does every project start with "Let's put that into Microsoft Project").
Software is a machine -- it has moving parts. It is not architecture. It does not have rooms that stand still.
Requirements are never completely accurate. Correct early and correct often.
Deliver early. Deliver often.
Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.