Artifacts

I have to fight to suppress a smile whenever I hear people talk about the "artifacts" that have to be produced as part of any modern systems development methodology.  As far as I can tell, the term "artifact" has replaced the more descriptive "deliverable", but that's not what I find amusing.

To me the word "artifact" has always meant something like: "An man-made object of historical or scientific value that has no practical use."  Or, in another sense, "data corruption produced by an error in the process that measures the data".  To those of us in the trenches who are required to create "artifacts" in addition to executable code, both of these definitions seem apt.