Demand More Rigor, Not Less
A desire for quality and technical purity encourages a rigorous approach to development. Formal methods such as VDM (Vienna Development Method), Z, and B are rarely used in commercial development. But methods that promote rigor (such as SSADM) continue to have a high level of use. Do they work? They can work well in the hands of skilled project managers who know what to use and what to leave out for a specific project. In unskilled hands, the level of rigor applied tends to be higher than necessary, project costs soar, and schedules slip.
In some organizations, the consequence of the failure of rigor is that business managers decide to do their own development. In others, hacking takes over. Visual Basic 3 was one of the main tools of the hackers. To continue to use this approach with Visual Basic 6 is at best a waste and at worst a disaster. The development process for a project should be decided by the project manager with the guidance of the analysts and designers. Prescribing a method from outside the project does not work. A Pathfinder approach provides a mechanism for understanding major projects before you commit large numbers of staff to them.