Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-03-19 06:20:13 - Graham Ellis
"Wouldn't it be nice if". Acronym. I've been using it for years and I don't know where it came from; I suspect it's both my invention and that of others too; I claim in back to 1980.
WIBNIF lists are a great asset to an ongoing product or business. I have several - I keep short term ones in pieces of demo software that I'm writing, medium term ones for contract code, for course development notes and things to do to our training centre and longer term ones for "life, the universe and everything".
Things are added freely at brain dump times. Slips of paper on the passenger seat of my car get one or two word notes on them as I drive around the country (yes, I do pull over to make the notes safely) and then they get added back to electronic lists. Over time, many things get filtered out - the "light of day" and "after seeing what others think of the idea" reviews. And things that remain for a while will lead to a direction for the future. If we're still thinking about an idea a week or two later / if we keep coming back to it / it's probably a good idea.