How many times as a developer do we get asked by our clients to create a new story to implement a feature assessed by the client as “trivial”? How many times do we get surprised by their reactions when we give them our story estimate. I’ve seen developers give this sort of optimistic estimate too, without considering all the wrinkles, like error handling, alternative usage scenarios, abusive usage & security concerns, and all sorts of other issues that can be way bigger than the “happy-path” through the code. Here’s a neat little article from Brent Simmons that summarises the sort of user experience and technical design that has to go into the “Oh, it’s easy” feature.
inessential.com: Anatomy of a feature.
