1. Writing unit tests?
  2. Doing design
  3. Having requirements that meet the 12 basic system requirements specifications

I have probably found countly white papers and read a stack of books in the past 5 years alone that speak at length of the benefits of unit testing.   Yet I've never seen one shred of evidence to support that a system without them is better.   Yet I run into people constantly who fight tooth and nail against them but can't offer a shred of evidence from industry experts to show that there is no value or why they shouldn't be done.   When you show them the evidence of it success' written and backed by the top 10% of the industry, the fortune 10 software companies, etc, etc, they like to say 'well we're not them'.   Well gee, you wonder why your software is buggy, takes forever to develop, is fragile as anything, and sits in a revolving door of bugs?   I mean to me it's common sense, but then they say that common sense is an oxy moron so what do I know.

So am I nuts in thinking that just because you have tenure at a company that it doesn't excuse you from writing documentation for others to have (or yourself to reference for that matter)?   Sure, you've all been on the team for a while but hey, we've all driven cars for a while, I guess auto-manufacturers shouldn't be required to put owners manuals in cars anymore.  Hey Microsoft - it's okay if you don't send help files with your next version of SQL Server - we've been using it for 10 years - we don't need it!    We have a certain level of knowledge and we should be able to just 'figure it out'.

And my favorite - 'it's okay that we have crappy requirements, the developer knows what to do'.   That is just so baseless of an arguement I don't even know where to begin.   That's the equivelent of saying, I don't need to check my oil - the oil light will come on if there's problem (which by the way when that oil light comes on, your usually almost out of oil and there is already severe damage to your engine at this point).  No, actually, it's worse than than that; I just can't come up with a good anology.