Thanks for the response. I see where you're going from. I only brought it up because my development organization would fail that part of the Joel Test, where many totally dysfunctional organizations I have worked with would pass. Doesn't pass my initial smell test.
It's easy to see someone jumping in and writing and re-writing code when they haven't thought it through as wasteful. People have a harder time seeing that writing and re-writing specs can be similarly wasteful.
And reworking a whiteboard sketch for a feature takes a lot less time than rewriting the spec.
I think Joel's comment of "thinking in a disciplined way before typing code" hits the nail on the head. Different people can think in disciplined ways before typing code. Some people do that by writing specs, other people do that by writing tests, others do it at the whiteboard. There's no one right way to do it.
It's easy to see someone jumping in and writing and re-writing code when they haven't thought it through as wasteful. People have a harder time seeing that writing and re-writing specs can be similarly wasteful.