Programmer’s Log Programmers Writing Stuff – Garry Bodsworth

Tickbox-Driven Design

During the Barcamb talk "Panic-Driven Design", I realised that it was an umbrella for a whole host of wrongheaded "something-driven design". The one I coined during the talk was one of my pet peeves which is Tickbox-Driven Design.

Tickbox-Driven Design is a close relation of Marketing-Driven Design, it is driven by market conditions and the competitors that you have. It involves having to tick off features that are "essential" to be able to sell (in the perception of marketing/sales), they don't have to be good, or even complete, but they have to be there yesterday. If a competitor has a certain feature it simply has to be implemented by even diverting resources. These features tend to be poorly specified and probably don't even address the underlying requirements.

When tickbox driven design takes over you are constantly playing catch-up and not innovating, and the longer it goes on the harder it becomes to break the cycle. It normally suggests that the problem can't be solved by development alone.

As the development tends to be rushed, poorly specified, and pointless (not the greatest motivating factor when you are the person attempting the implementation) the overhead of maintenance becomes much greater than expected. It can also severely affect morale because you constantly have the perception that your product is no good and behind the curve, when in reality it isn't always a lost cause.