What is your Software Development Religion today ? And where does the Customer fit in that ?

The Swiss Army manual says: When the map and the terrain disagree, trust the terrain. However, in software industry, there seems to be an unending effort to make sure the terrain is retrofitted so that it looks much more like the map in hand ! So, I have modified the Swiss Army saying to suit the reality in the software development community as: When the real-life and bookish process definition differs, it clearly shows you have not understood the bookish definition, and hence you must change the real-life until it looks like the bookish definition and then trust the bookish definition. …more