The Reliant Robin

Image by Charles01 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

This name was coined by my friend Brian, when he heard of it. Originally I was going to call this anti-pattern a "three-wheeled buggy". Not nearly as catchy, i am afraid... Here is a link from Wiki if you're still curious about what this is. In a few words, this is a three-weeled car, which runs ok on the straight line, but does not do well in sharp turns - it rolles over... a lot... Since you know... it only has three weels.

In the world of software it is Lean/Agile design principals that are take to extreme. Ideally Lean was meant to eliminate watefulness in software projects. In some cases oversealous leads take it extreme and eliminate important component too, like you know - the fourth wheel, citing the fact that those are not explicitely asked for by the business and therefore are a complete waste of time. The outcomes of such idiology are often utterly useless but also very funny.

The reality is this: business requirements do not get into the non-functional parts of the software, while those are often as important as the functional ones for a successful outcome.

Successful software projects often do spend their precious cycles implementing the Non-Functional Requirements (NFR-s) as well, if they want their product to survive for more than thirty days after consultants have left the building.