I realized after building a bunch of executable specifications that they were pretty programmer-ish; who in their right mind would calculate intermediate values for a long, involved calculation and list them in a big table? A programmer would, that's who.
So, after re-evaluating my exec-specs (and reading these books) I crafted a bunch of end-to-end calculations that check the intermediate values as they go along - so that a casual observer, or even one brandishing a calculator (or a pencil and paper!) could follow along and grok the results.
These calculations are basically User Stories and they are the perfect complement to executable specifications; the User Stories relate business rules, their application and the value to the customer without going into details whereas the ex-specs dive right into all the gory details in pursuit of fleshing out the business rules, their general application and the edge cases therein.
They are a powerful combination to facilitate discussion and discovery of how the system is going to work and how to verify that it does. Forever.
Not to mention a great source of system documentation for both customers and developers.
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