Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009 - (Page 47)

to modify more than 15 percent of the package then you’re probably in trouble—and rein in their desire to modify the package until it perfectly meets their needs. My advice is that if you need a perfect implementation then a package implementation isn’t for you and instead you’ll need to build from scratch. An important consideration will be to stick to the modification strategies supported by the vendor—if you stray from them you will in effect end up owning the code and it will be difficult to take advantage of new releases of the package. A lot of the work will likely be around data semantics, either putting transformation code in place or refactoring your existing data sources and systems to conform with the semantics supported by the package. Minimally, agilists do developer regression testing throughout the project, and better yet take a test-driven approach to development. This can be problematic if the package that you’ve chosen doesn’t come with a regression test suite, although I’d have to question why you’d consider buying a package that wasn’t easy to test. Be that as it may, if the vendor doesn’t provide an adequate test suite, then you’ll at least need to wrap the package with black-box test cases. You might want to consider partnering with the vendor on this or even selling the test suite back to the vendor to recoup your development costs The Transition phase is the same as for new development. You’ll need to finalize your testing efforts, fix any last defects that you find, announce the system, train people in it, potentially pilot it or run it in parallel with existing systems, and release it into production. I described an agile approach to this work in “The Agile End Game” (www.ddj .com/architect/198800565). Parting Thoughts Package implementations are risky. They initially look great from a business point of view but can easily run into trouble if the bureaucracy gets out of hand. By applying disciplined agile strategies to package implemen- tation, you can improve your chances of success. These strategies are based on putting together a team that you can trust to do the job, allowing them to actually do the job, doing just enough work to make the decisions that you need to, and doing just enough modification to the package to meet your needs. Many people are worried about an agile approach to package implementation because it differs so drastically from the traditional strategy. The bottom line is that if your organization isn’t capable of putting together a small team to give you a good gut feel about a package in a period of a week or two, then there is little chance that you’re capable of actually pulling off the full-blown package implementation. We know that the traditional strategy doesn’t work very well, so why not “go at risk” and try an agile approach? DDJ Scott is Practice Leader Agile Development for IBM Rational. The Advertiser Index ADVERTISER PAGE # ADVERTISER Visit Our Advertisers’ Web Sites Today! PAGE # ADVERTISER PAGE # Abraxas 38 www.abxsoft.com Altova 5 www.altova.com Amyuni 11 www.amyuni.com dtSearch 37 www.dtsearch.com FairCom 35 www.faircom.com Gimpel Software 43 www.gimpel.com Imagix 31 www.imagix.com Infragistics C4 www.infragistics.com Intersystems 7 www.intersystems.com ISC2 13 www.isc2.org LEAD Technologies 25 www.leadtools.com McObject 27 www.mcobject.com Microsoft C2-1,19 www.defyallchallenges.com Programmer's Paradise 9 www.programmersparadise.com Programming Research 8,34 www.programmingresearch.com Rally Software Dvpt 46 www.rallydev.com Scientific Toolworks 26 www.getunderstand.com Seapine Software C3 www.seapine.com Smart Bear Software 15,42 www.smartbear.com Sparx Systems 45 www.sparxsystems.com The index on this page is provided as a service to our readers. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions. February 2009 l www.ddj.com l Dr. Dobb’s Journal 47 http://www.ddj.com/architect/198800565 http://www.ddj.com/architect/198800565 http://www.rallydev.com http://www.abxsoft.com http://www.intersystems.com http://www.altova.com http://www.getunderstand.com http://www.isc2.org http://www.amyuni.com http://www.seapine.com http://www.leadtools.com http://www.dtsearch.com http://www.mcobject.com http://www.smartbear.com http://www.faircom.com http://www.defyallchallenges.com http://www.gimpel.com http://www.sparxsystems.com http://www.programmersparadise.com http://www.imagix.com http://www.infragistics.com http://www.programmingresearch.com http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009

Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Conversations Computing in the Clouds Software Development in the Cloud Videos and Oracle Forms 10g Parallel LINQ Decoupling C Header Files Effective Concurrency Disciplined Agility Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009

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