Dr. Dobb's Journal - November 2007 - (Page 61)

d11ambler_p4ma 9/10/07 11:39 AM Page 61 could count the number of function points delivered, it’s doubtful that the benefit of knowing the count is greater than the cost of doing the count in the first place. In my opinion, just the fact that the business stakeholders are willing to continue funding the project should be a sufficient metric. Traditionalists will often claim that Agilists are flying blind, but nothing could be further from the truth. At the beginning of each iteration, the team plans their work for that iteration in detail, producing an iteration task list (our form of a detailed project plan). According to the Agile Adoption survey, iteration task lists are the fifth most valuable work product of Agile development teams (the first four were working software, source code, developer tests, and whiteboard sketches). Agile teams, particularly those working at scale, will also create highlevel schedules that communicate major milestones such as proving the architecture, dependencies on other teams who put together training materials or install produc- tion hardware, and on release windows available to the team. This is particularly important for release/transition phase activities (www.ddj.com/development-tools/ 198800565). Some Agile processes, particularly those based on the Unified Process such as OpenUp or Rational Unified Process (RUP), include explicit control points in the form of milestones. Figure 3 depicts the lifecycle of the OpenUP, which includes four specific project phases. Many extremists within the Agile community will denounce the concept of phases, often in fear of a waterfall approach to development, but the reality is that when they’re done right, phases enable good governance and scaling of Agile techniques. For example, during the Inception phase, you do some initial modeling to envision the requirements and architecture strategy and drive stakeholders to a general agreement as to the scope and vision of the effort. This reduces major business risks and puts your project on a sound footing. During the Elaboration phase, you build a working, end-to-end skeleton of your system, which addresses architecturally difficult requirements, thereby Figure 1: Scheduling work on an agile project. Figure 2: Continuous monitoring of teams. Get data right AddressObject API Prevent errors before they occur to ensure the integrity of your database. Use AddressObject API to verify, cleanse and format customer data at the point of entry or in batch. Address Object easily integrates with Perl, PHP Java and .NET. , - offering a better way to build-in data validation. right from the start Get a FREE demo at: MelissaData.com/dobbs 1.800.MELISSA November 2007 l www.ddj.com l Dr. Dobb’s Journal 61 http://www.ddj.com/development-tools/198800565 http://www.ddj.com/development-tools/198800565 http://www.imagix.com http://MelissaData.com/dobbs http://MelissaData.com/dobbs http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - November 2007

Contents Hmmmm Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook Smart Compilers - But Smart Enough? Conversations Grid-Enabling Resource-Intensive Applications Distributed Computing: Windows and Linux Adobe AIR: Desktop/Web Convergence Transparency on Demand Reusable Associations Effective Concurrency The Agile Edge Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - November 2007

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