A "straw-man proposal", also known as an Aunt Sally, is a brainstormed simple business proposal intended to generate discussion of its disadvantages and to provoke the generation of new and better proposals. Often, a straw man document will be prepared by one or two people prior to kicking off a larger project. In this way, the team can jump start their discussions with a document that is likely to contain many, but not all the key aspects to be discussed. As the document is revised, it may be given other edition names such as the more solid-sounding "stone-man", "iron-man", and so on, etc.

The succession of names comes from the requirements document for the programming language Ada. In this document, the various stages were Strawman, Woodman, Tinman and Ironman. Later, another Ada document added the following sequence of men: Sandman, Pebbleman and Stoneman.

In software development, a crude plan or document may serve as the strawman or starting point in the evolution of a project. The strawman is not expected to be the last word; it is refined until a final model or document is obtained that resolves all issues concerning the scope and nature of the project. In this context, a strawman can take the form of an outline , a set of charts, a presentation, or a paper.

References

It should be noted that a Strawman Proposal is not a Strawman.

See also

• Straw man