The mortifying ordeal of being known A Fragment by Tim Kreider opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. lovehumanity
Requirements proliferation Any attempt to formulate all possible requirements at the start of a project will fail and would cause considerable delays. — Pahl and Beitz, Engineering Design As Project Manager, I had to reject the requirements document as totally impractical, and have a quite small team of architects, marketers, and implementers extract the essence. Requirements proliferation must be fought, by both birth control and infanticide. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Design of Design YagniA grossly obese set of requirementsFeatures and complexity features