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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

The customer doesn't need to be shown every "wrong thing".

Then how will you know if it's the wrong thing? If you're not user testing then you're just guessing.

I build things iteratively all the time, without anyone seeing most of it. I move things up for review and QA after I'm satisfied that I've done the things that need doing, and done them well enough for purpose. Customers aren't the only opinion on what's good or bad. They're more like the final and most important.

Now that process is much, much faster.

Presumably you have at least a partial spec, and some domain knowledge. If your invoices doesn't show amounts or a recipient address, for example, you don't need a user to tell you that is an error.

In my experience this just makes them lose confidence in you and the company. So when it eventually is right, they're resistant. Worst case you lose the contract.

The opposite is true. If you spoonfeed them every error or gap during development, they'll quickly ditch you for someone who will not bother them with all the things they expect you to know how to fix without their involvement.

You have to do it in the right way. You want to catch as many gaps as possible before you build the thing and just as you start building it.

If you just fill in the gaps yourself, your software doesn't work. Software that doesn't meet the requirements is legitimately useless. The problem is, most of the requirements are in the customer's head, and you have to squeeze them out. Most of them are unconscious, they might not even know them.

Nobody has suggested anything else, but that still does not mean you need - or should - burden your customers/users with every problem you run into. Nobody does that because it's make your users run screaming to your competitors. It's why we hire experienced people who can make educated choices and package up changes and raise targeted sets of questions to stakeholders.

But think of the strawmen.

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