Agile Junction

Agile RUP

Kirk Knoernschild — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:54:33 +0000

Introduction

The Rational Unified Process (RUP) has become a defacto standard for many organizations as they look to improve their software development processes. Unfortunately, transitioning to RUP is an arduous and risky process as teams struggle with adjusting to an iterative style of development. As a witness to many process improvement efforts utilizing RUP, I've found most are little more than reinventions of an organization's existing practices. The result is a pseudo-iterative style of development that favors excessive documentation manifest as RUP artifacts, a predictive and plan-driven approach providing no clear barometer to gauge success, and a tendency to revert to traditionally flawed practices as teams succumb to the pressures of project deadlines. Certainly, RUP should not be blamed for the failure, but often times that's the case, casting a dark shadow on iterative development and making teams ever more leary to consider agile development.

Agile and Iterative

Kirk Knoernschild — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:43:41 +0000

Agile is iterative. But iterative isn't always agile. Increased agility is not a natural by-product of iterative development, and choosing an iterative evelopment process with high degrees of ceremony inhibit agility.

Agile Architecture

Kirk Knoernschild — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 22:04:36 +0000

Software architecture is difficult to define. Ask five different developers their definition of software architecture, and you'll likely get five different answers. Arguably though, we can agree that software architecture represents the significant technical decisions spanning the breadth of the system. For instance, managing the dependencies between modules is a significant aspect of software architecture. Developing application frameworks that promote consistency across use cases is architecturally significant. Identifying application layers and the behavioral granularity of those layers is architecturally significant, as well. As Booch so eloquently states:

Agile UML

Kirk Knoernschild — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:10:40 +0000

I believe the Unified Modeling Languages (UML) is a wonderful and powerful modeling language. The ability to create different types of diagrams representing multiple system perspectives offers numerous advantages. A picture is worth a thousand words, and an enormous amount of information can be conveyed on a single diagram or a complete model of a system, no doubt. But what for? What problem are you trying to solve? It's possible there are other, more effective techniques that address the problem. How does UML compare to other agile practices that address the same challenges of UML? Can UML be used in an agile way?