Brandon Savage shares some of his thoughts on software development and how creating the spec for the project affects it by basic it on a rule - the 15 Minute Rule.

Since most developers (myself included) are also generally bad at developing good specs, it becomes even more difficult to create such a rule. However, I heard a great adage from someone recently that I thought summed up how developers can see specs nearly perfectly. "If it takes more than 15 minutes to determine what it is that you’re building, the spec wasn’t done properly".

He suggests that not a single line of code should be developed before the spec is completed and, since developers usually aren't the ones creating the spec, they need to have a clear, concise definition of what's expected before hand.