Design by committee is a term sometimes used to describe a design that is flawed because too many people provided input. The phrase implies a lack of a coherent vision and, perhaps as a result, a failure to successfully solve the problems the design was intended to solve. In a software development context, design by committee is a controversial issue. According to some experts, design by committee leads to overly long specifications with an overabundance of features (sometimes called feature creep ) and many inconsistent and/or redundant elements. In an interview in New Scientist , Donald Norman (author of the book The Design of Everyday Things ) said "You don't do good software design by committee. You do it best by having a dictator. From the user's point of view, you must have a coherent design philosophy..." Norman believes that one reason people still have difficulty learning how to use computers, for example, is the poor results of design by committee.
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The World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C ), on the other hand, has spoken out in favor of design by committee. W3C working groups typically consist of 10 to 20 members collaborating on a technical specification for a year or more. Furthermore, the working group also solicits input through a public mailing list. According to a W3C report, design by committee doesn't deserve its bad reputation. To the contrary, the organization's report claims that a greater number of people working on a design bring more experience and creativity to the project and also have the ability to catch more errors.
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