Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

051 Don’t Eat the Daisies

The fallacy that exhaustive requirements and specification documents lead to better design.

The don’t-eat-the-daisies fallacy is the belief that it is possible to create checklists, requirements, and specification documents that account for every possibility, including obvious and idiotic possibilities. The principle borrows from the book Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, in which a mother learns that no matter how comprehensive her list of directives to her children — e.g., don’t leave your bicycles on the front steps; don’t use the guest towels, etc. — they would always find mischief to engage in that was not on the list, such as eating the daisies on the dining-room table. The lesson is that there are always unstated ...