The Spec Session: Why Teams Must Align on 'Done' Before Writing Code

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A software development practice called the Spec Session brings together engineers, product thinkers, and designers to work through a single ticket until every participant holds the same mental model of what 'done' means. The session focuses not on implementation details or backlog grooming, but on surfacing edge cases, contradictions, and unstated assumptions before any code is written or an AI agent is run. Disagreements during the session are treated as a sign it is working, since each conflict reveals differing interpretations that would otherwise emerge later at greater cost. A rotating session lead is responsible for driving decisions with named tradeoffs rather than waiting for full consensus, and an asynchronous pull-request-based version can substitute when the team cannot meet in real time. The author argues that most teams already possess the alignment skill but lack a default forum for it, and that establishing such a shared space before building is the core habit missing from modern development workflows.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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