Software product success requires timely delivery. There are many factors that influence our ability to properly scope, schedule, and deliver software. When we propose changes in requirements we introduce risk to the schedule. We can set reasonable expectations for our stakeholders while maintaining a realistic work environment and schedule. In part 1 of this post we detail a requirements triage process that organizes requirements by complexity and allows us to set and meet expectations of delivery.
Foundation Series: Feature Driven Development (FDD) Explained
Feature driven development (FDD) is one of several agile methodologies for developing software iteratively. Iterative development is the opposite of waterfall development. FDD is a process that begins with high level planning to define the scope of the project, which then moves into incremental delivery. Each increment of delivery involves a design phase and an implementation phase. The scope of each increment is a single feature. Extreme programming (XP) is a much better known agile methodology. XP is often described as an emergent design process, in that no one knows what the finished product is going to be until the product is finished. FDD, by comparison, defines the overall scope of the project at the beginning, but does not define the details.
Software design and specification and making movies
Alan Cooper presents the analogy that software development is like making movies in his book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Cooper is presenting the analogy in the context of validating the business case for investing in interaction design, but it holds true for requirements as well.
Interaction design explained by Alan Cooper
There’s a Clash of the Titans joint-interview posted at FTPOnline between Kent Beck and Alan Cooper called Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design. It’s 10 pages of back and forth. In short, these icons agree on objectives, and disagree on how to achieve them. They also spend some time (mis)characterizing each other’s positions and defining their own. In this post we will look at how Alan Cooper explains Interaction Design. We would say that he defines interaction design more as a requirements than a design activity.