There are some bits of software that are simple enough to describe first and then implement, but just about any software that has more than one person working on it is more complex than that (IME), and for those cases, one might as well just implement it anyway.
There are varying degrees to which a team or business may invest in collecting and negotiating requirements before starting development, and there is obviously some amount of this work that is essential and valuable.
That said, as this planning investment grows beyond some reasonable point, and moves deeper into technical details, it will be composed of more waste and this waste will only become apparent as the people executing discover the real technical and product requirements.
The technical debt we're discussing will become an option immediately as the engineering work begins, and it's up to the team to decide how much, if any debt they are interested in taking on at whatever point in time.
I'm not convinced that it's helpful to conceive of the thing we're all working on and becoming more and more intimately familiar with as a new thing over some randomly selected interval.
There is no reality in which we can fully design or specify everything up front. If the specification were comprehensive, it would be the solution.
There are varying degrees to which a team or business may invest in collecting and negotiating requirements before starting development, and there is obviously some amount of this work that is essential and valuable.
That said, as this planning investment grows beyond some reasonable point, and moves deeper into technical details, it will be composed of more waste and this waste will only become apparent as the people executing discover the real technical and product requirements.
The technical debt we're discussing will become an option immediately as the engineering work begins, and it's up to the team to decide how much, if any debt they are interested in taking on at whatever point in time.
I'm not convinced that it's helpful to conceive of the thing we're all working on and becoming more and more intimately familiar with as a new thing over some randomly selected interval.
There is no reality in which we can fully design or specify everything up front. If the specification were comprehensive, it would be the solution.