part of the balancing act in agile is understanding the timing of when a decision must be made, and its impact on the project’s success.

a discussion came up in the Agile Usability forum… it had to do with the UEX team wanting to ensure understanding of 3 content templates ahead of time (for a content-rich web site project), and the dev team advocating for a “just in time” approach.

my suggestion… if it is costly to decide on the content templates late in the game, explain it to the dev folks.

or conversely, have the dev folks explain how the template choice has no impact on the timing of dev and cost.

bottom line, talk! have people prove to each other one way or the other…

sometimes, we “architects” can design systems in such a way as to squeeze formerly “costly” aspects of a traditional system/approach into trivial aspects. sometimes.