You can't corral a bunch of interns -- of potentially unknown skills levels, even with our hindsight of where they wound up -- and expect them to wing their way through a "greenfield" project to launch in 10-or-so weeks. Especially not when you're filming them also.
Imagine them arguing endlessly about how many points to give to the VNC extensions they needed? And at a time when most businesses had maybe heard of agile, but never used it.
Functional specs are super-duper common still. I do (often fixed-cost) bespoke software for clients: can you imagine a non-tech client and me handwaving our way through a complex project one sprint at a time? No, thank you.
Having said all that, Joel's a talented guy, and he probably had a really good idea of what he'd have to do to build the whole thing. When people like that write the functional spec, you're going to wind up with a high-quality document.
I think that is my main issue with "Business Analysts" I have to work with. Most of the time they have no clue at all about the system and no writing ability.
They just throw ideas in Jira tickets and if you start asking questions or clarifications to put ticket back for rewrite they nag you are not agile enough and dragging whole company back to waterfall.
Imagine them arguing endlessly about how many points to give to the VNC extensions they needed? And at a time when most businesses had maybe heard of agile, but never used it.
Functional specs are super-duper common still. I do (often fixed-cost) bespoke software for clients: can you imagine a non-tech client and me handwaving our way through a complex project one sprint at a time? No, thank you.
Having said all that, Joel's a talented guy, and he probably had a really good idea of what he'd have to do to build the whole thing. When people like that write the functional spec, you're going to wind up with a high-quality document.