Miscellaneous Writing & PodCasts
Finding the Forest in the Trees pdf
OOPSLA 2005 Practitioner Report
October 2005
While the iterative development approaches found in Agile Software Development fulfill the promise of working software each iteration, that task of choosing which software to build first can be daunting.
User Centerd Design Round Table mp3
Agile Toolkit Podcast hosted by Bob Payne
August 8, 2005
This Round table addresses the integration of User Centered Design into an agile project. Hosted by Bob Payne. Guests: Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Lynn Mller, and Jeff Patton.
Hierarchically Managed Attributes pdf
PLoP 2004
Assigning and maintaining values for attributes of large numbers of business objects can be cumbersome. Hierarchically Managed Attributes offers a simple solution by arranging business objects into categorized hierarchies, then assigning and maintaining those attributes at a category level.
Improving On Agility: Adding Usage-Centered Design to a Typical Agile Software Development pdf
ForUse 2003
This paper describes, at a high level, the incremental development cycle typical of an agile software development environment, and how adding Usage-Centered Design will help this process run smoother. Specific points of applicability during the incremental development cycle are pointed out, along with the specific U-CD technique to apply there. The paper assumes a basic knowledge of agile software development and Usage-Centered Design.
Unfixing the Fixed Scope Project: Using Agile Methodologies to Create Flexibility in Project Scope pdf
ADC 2004
Although it seems to be common knowledge that it's impossible to succeed in a project with fixed time, quality and scope, we often continue to try anyway. This experience report discusses our successful failure at running fixed time and scope projects. I say successful failure because we actually failed to fix scope but arrived at an acceptable way to vary scope and deliver on time in an environment not normally amenable to variable scope. This paper discusses the methods used and makes recommendations on how you might unfix scope in your development environment.
Hitting the Target: Adding Interaction Design Agile Software Development pdf
OOPSLA 2003
Extreme Programming appears to be a solution for discovering and meeting requirements faster (through close customer collaboration) as well as creating quality software. In practice we found XP did deliver high quality software quickly, but the resulting product still failed to delight the customer. Although the finished product should have been an exact fit, the actual end-user still ended up slogging through the system to accomplish necessary day-to-day work. This paper describes using interaction design in an agile development process to resolve this issue. Using interaction design as a day-to-day practice throughout an iterative development process helps our team at Tomax Technologies deliver high quality software, while feeling confident the resulting software will more likely meet end-user expectations. The method of Interaction Design followed here is based on Constantine and Lockwood's Usage- Centered Design. Recommendations are provided on how to practice an agile form of U-CD and how to incorporate bits of Interaction Design thinking into every day development and product planning decisions.
