how does your design hold up?

Just how good is the code that you write?

The true gauntlet comes when you start testing and fixing bugs.

*How easy is it to find your bugs?
*How easy is it to fix your bugs?

I started to write "and more importantly, how easy is it to fix your bugs," but both questions are equally important, as hard to find bugs are naturally hard to fix.

The true test of the flexibilty of your design is when you have to make changes to allow for changes in the specifications, mistakes in the specifications, misinterpretations of the specifications, and plain bugs.

Good designs are easier to change than bad designs. They're less brittle, so changing a feature won't cause other features to break.

In the long run, a good design saves a whole lot of headaches in the testing phase and beyond.

My boss pointed out that the most experienced (and best) programmer should write the core functionality and samples so that the less experienced programmers can use the code as templates to implement other portions of the system. It's a very efficient way to make use of your programmers.

And, the most important aspect of any project is communicating the requirements.