Analysis Paralysis is a term given to the situation where a team of otherwise intelligent and well-meaning analysts enter into a phase of analysis that only ends when the project is cancelled. Common causes are:
- The lure of infinite composability and decomposability
- Insistence on completing all analysis before beginning design.
- Regular change of leads and their philosophies (each trashing and restarting the work of the previous)
- Too many learning curves at once (underqualified analyst) causing incessant revisiting of prior work
- Lack of goals
- Increasingly conflicting goals (often political)
- Creative speculation, when discovery and definition are required.
- BigProjectSyndrome: this one will do it all, will use the latest tools, will use a new paradigm, will use all new developers, will start with a clean slate, will handle all use cases of two or more existing systems in the first release, etc.
- Risk avoidance, fear of making a mistake.
I didn't know this was its name.