58 Designing A Light Methodology

Alistair Cockburn, Humans and Technology

Waterfront Centre Hotel
Malaspina Room

The methodology of an organization is a social construction that includes the roles, skills, teaming, activities, techniques, deliverables, standards, habits, and culture of the organization as it develops software. The first part of the tutorial introduces language and constructs needed to evaluate, compare, and construct methodologies. These include precision, accuracy, tolerance, relevance, and scale, along with the nine structural elements of a methodology. Several examples of effective, real, lightweight methodologies are given, along with commentary on the social setting for each. The tutorial then examines the conditions suited to shifting from a lighter to a heavier methodology and the penalty for doing so. The tutorial ends with the presentation of a small family of lightweight and practical methodologies, optimized for productivity, and making maximum use of human, face-to-face communication. Considerations about success and failure in affecting culture are revisited.

Attendees will learn both what lies beneath and what constitutes the beast called "methodology." They will see why one size will not fit all, why book methodologies don't work as written, why home-grown methodologies seem to work, and what factors in their own organization affect their methodology. They will learn how to make greater use of the communicating and thinking abilities of the people on their team, and lighten up on the written deliverables.

Attendee Background: This tutorial is for experienced developers, team leaders, methodologists, and technology selectors trying to choose or design a methodology for their organization. Significant software team experience is expected, preferably but not necessarily OO. Participants must have used at least one methodology and thought about others.

Alistair Cockburn is consulting fellow at Humans and Technology and special advisor to the Central Bank of Norway. He is a specialist in human factors in software development, particularly for object-oriented projects. Besides being an active software designer and project leader, he wrote OO methodologies for IBM in 1992, 1994, and 1996. His lectures and courses are requested throughout the world. Mr. Cockburn continually debriefs projects to learn more of what makes projects and teams work. His book, "Surviving Object-Oriented Projects" was published in 1997.

Other tutorials on OO methodologies are:

1: The Rational Unified Process
2: Practical Use Case Modeling
9, 9W: Responsibility-Driven Analysis
10, 10R: Techniques for Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
21, 21R: Responsibility-Driven Design
23: Advanced Object-Oriented Concepts
43, 43W: Objectory: The Unified Process
44: Catalysis: Systematic Components, Framework and Patterns with UML
59: A Third Generation OO Methodology - Advanced Tasks and Techniques

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Last edited 01 October 1998 09:33:45