www.greg-wright.co.uk

In just 7 weeks of November and December 2008 I wrote the initial code for http://www.stuff2send.com, a site which allows people travelling round the country to earn extra money by delivering packages as part of their journey. The site, which included Google Map and PayPal integration, went live on time and within budget and support and development was then taken over by the brilliant Tom and Lisa at 18aproductions.com.

There were many reasons why the project was such a great success but one in particular stands out and it all has to do with business rules. Before I started coding Colin Hay knew exactly how the site would be used. The business rules were predefined. "Use Cases" showed me how the site would be used. The only near disaster in the project came when I hadn't completely understood Colin's requirements and had to go back and recode some work (this could have been avoided by me reflecting back to Colin exactly what I was going to do). If anything needed explanation Colin was only a phone call away, and I always got a clear answer.

Why am I telling you this? Well so many projects fail because of unclear or changing business rules. When developing software it seems to me that you have only two choices, either 1) Code the business rules or 2) Write a system that allows third parties to specify the business rules and implements the rules for them. So many projects fail because they go for route (1) without knowing what the rules are a priori. If project managers can not give clear direction the developers are left guessing and that is a recipe for disaster.