“Jobs couldn’t decide whether to use the version with his voice or to stick with Dreyfuss. Finally, the night came when they had to ship the ad; it was due to air, appropriately enough, on the television premier of ‘Toy Story’. As was often the case, Jobs did not like to be forced to make a decision. He told Clow to ship both versions; this would give him until the morning to decide. When morning came, Jobs called and told them to use the Dreyfuss version.” (from “Steve Jobs”, by Walter Isaacson, p 331)

Recent Change Note: "On Specification" 5/28/1987

Different people have varying views of the needs and definition of a specification. One says the minimum requirement of a specification is that it be executable; The other requires assertions and proofs to be possible in the language. Lamport calls a specification a contract between user and implementer such that neither must talk to the other; Brooks says that clients do not and can not know their needs well enough to write such a contract.

What is a specification, really? At what point can one say that a thing is fully specified?

I hope this little story gives us some distance to examine our prejudices about specifications:

Just found an old hand-written journal, dated May 1993, with my then-notes on methodologies and methodology tools. I find it interesting reading, as it refers already back then to business scenarios and Warburton, who introduced me to personas also back then in 1993.

Here is the photo of the journal entry. You probably have to be a hard-core geek to read it, but if you are, I think you will also find it interesting.