Software design methods: life belt or leg iron?

Do software design methods have a future? The issue I explore in this article is concerned with the problems that the use of design methods can present. It can be expressed as a question: “Will the adoption of a design method help the software development process (the `life belt' role), or is there significant risk that its use will lead to suboptimum solutions (the `leg iron' role)?” (I use “method” to mean “a way of doing something”, rather than using the more pretentious-sounding “methodology”, which more correctly means “study of methods”). To address, but not necessarily answer, this question, I first consider what designing involves in a wider context, and then compare this with what we do, and finally consider what this might imply for the future