"The design is already done" I've heard this one hundreds of times over the years, and it's actually never been the case. Ever. There's always some functiona

"The design is already done" I've heard this one hundreds of times over the years, and it's actually never been the case. Ever. There's always some functionality question that the design creates/raises/highlights which often becomes a stopping point until a hard decision is made. I was handed a 240 page mockup - team had spent weeks working on this, with a skilled team of design professionals. I was told "everything's been thought of - just make this (pixel perfect!) in to a web app". Well, basic things like "these select box and radio button together lead to 11 different combinations, 3 of which are mutually exclusive scenarios. How should we deal with this? Disable the items in that case? Or show an error to the user? Both? Neither? Should we log that people are trying those combos (so the business process could be adjusted to accommodate that expressed need)?" "Dude, we've already planned it all out - you don't need to think about this, just implement it - all the hard work has been done. These people know what they're doing." With all respect to the talented design folks out there, sometimes "design" people are just putting buttons and boxes in to photoshop. Just one example I dealt with last year: in 240 screens, site shell wasn't consistent in use of fonts between screens - step 1 of 7 had 12 pt font in the 'step X of 7' area, step 2 had 11 pt font, step 3 had 12, step 4 had 10.5,.... So anyone looking at an individual process I'd put together would take 'step 3' and say "this isn't exactly what the design team put together" "Fixing it" would then get feedback from someone else indicating "the font changes when I move between the steps - this is bad". Toggle slider to "enable" X and "enable Y" (two services), and a pulldown at the top also indicating if you want "X" or "Y" or "X and Y". Pull down X, "X" toggle slider is enabled, and "Y" toggle slider is disabled. Pull down Y, the reverse happens. If you toggle X on, the "Select X" from the pulldown is selected. If toggle Y is on, "Select Y" in pulldown is selected. If X and Y are both toggled "on", 'Select X and Y' is chosen. If X and Y are both toggled off... what should happen to that pulldown? ("it's gotta be a dynamic representation of the state of those two options" - but there's only 3 options and 4 possible states) ... reply was "well, they can't do that - it's not possible for those to happen". Except... that's the state the screen starts in. This was two examples of 8-10 "issues" I found in just a few weeks. "Winging it" - just making an basic educated "I'll choose a sane default in the absence of guidance" - every time that path was chosen, it was the 'wrong' choice (even when a right one was never given). So... yes, minor rant, but "the designs are already done" - by other people, especially those who will not bear any cost of actual implementation.... TRIPLE your time estimate. From the already doubled one. And go buy some Dale Carnegie material to brush up on winning friends and influencing people.