This story is one of my all time favourites. Many times when we design a software, many scope creeps and feature creeps continue un-checked. At one stage, the whole project collapses because we loose sight of the core problem we were set to solve in the first place. The following story from Arabian Nights illustrates this very well.

The Bedouin was sleeping in his tent and his camel lay outside. After a while the camel came to the tent and said its nose was cold.

“Put it inside the tent then, and it will be warm”, said the Bedouin.

“Master, my neck is cold”, the camel soon said.

“Put it in the tent”, said the good Arab.

Then: “Master, my body is cold”, said the camel.

“Put it in the tent then”, said the Bedouin.

“My tail is cold”, said the camel.

“Alright, alright, put it inside”, said the master.

So the camel settled in the tent. After a while, it spoke up. “Master, there is no room enough for both of us. Can you go out and leave the tent to me?”

There is a similar, slightly more profound Indian Folk story, but that’s for a different day :-)

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