We know the optimal situation of negotiating corrections of specifications with the customer, getting the specs to do what the client wanted, not what they said or thought they wanted. That's negotiating, explaining.
Sometimes, we're unable to convince the client. We're forced to produce broken as designed. This, called "demonology" by merit of mages summoning demons and demons fulfilling their wishes very literally, causing the mage's demise as result, is another approach that will leave the customer very dissatisfied once they realize their error, and of course try to pin the blame on the developer.
Now I just faced a very different approach: the customer created simple specs that fail to account for some critical caveat, and is completely unwilling to fix them, admit the obvious errors and accept suggested corrections. The product made to these specs will be critically broken, and possibly might cost human lives. Still, it's too late to drop the contract entirely. The contract has punitive clauses for that, ones we can't really accept.
The boss' decision? We do the work right and lie to the customer that we did it according to the specs. The algorithms in question are hidden deep enough under the surface, the product will do the work just fine, won't fail in the caveat situation, and unless someone digs too deep, they will never discover we didn't break it as requested.
Is there some common name for this tactics of execution of specs?
