As you may know Agile software development is inspired by the principles of Lean Manufacturing which in turn is derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS). One Agile methodology, Lean Software Development even borrows the name Lean to make the connection explicit. Since the principles in Lean and TPS have much in common with how Japanese always have approached manufacturing and that TPS supposedly permeates the whole of Toyota, it comes as a real surprise that Toyota uses a waterfall process for software development!
Posts Tagged ‘Development’
Toyota and Waterfall methdology for developing software
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010Universal Assembly Cache – Dependency Management for Mono and Microsoft.NET
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009In the Java world there are several ways of handling dependencies between project components in a shared development environment. Maven is a generic build tool that creates a standardized way of creating, building and publishing component artifacts. Dependencies between the different components are declared in a Maven build file and Maven automatically downloads the dependencies and all transient dependencies recursively from local or public repositories. Repositories can be local to a particular developer, department or enterprise; or they can be public, available to the development community at large. Ivy is another utility which focus solely on dependency management. It is positioned as the lean and simple alternative to Maven which focus only on the dependency aspects and that integrates well with Ant (the generic java build tool).
For .NET based solutions there does not seem to be neither a Maven nor Ivy style dependency management system for development. This article outlines a solution to dependency management in the .NET world that has been inspired by the Maven and Ivy.
Self programming language
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008A while ago I reflected on Object Oriented Programming and the fact that it really is more about classes than objects. Reading up on Newspeak, the new langugage proposed by Gilad Bracha I came across Self, one of the language on which Newspeak is indebted to. In Self no classes exists, only objects. More on this later.
Crystal Clear – by Alistair Cockburn
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008Crystal Clear is the smallest of a series of methodologies for software development, all created by Alistair Cockburn. It is smallest in the sense of the project size it addresses (up to eight developers) and in the number of things it prescribes. Other Methodologies, deriving their names from the colors of crystal, are increasingly heavier. They all share the same “DNA” though, which is “expressed” differently with increasing project size and criticality, the latter meaning the higher cost in terms of money or at the extreme human life.
The book in itself has an interesting setup where each chapter addresses an aspect of Crystal Clear in a different format, tone and style. The purpose of this setup is to appeal to a large audience where each reader can find at least one chapter that conveys the essence of Crystal Clear to her clearly. The most peculiar chapter is probably the one where an ignorant Alistair queries a fictive Crystal character over a series of letters about the inner workings of a successful software development team; thus mimicking a Socratic dialogue. I am not sure this stunt works in practice, but at least true to the intent some chapters work better for me than others… All chapters are, however, still written in an easy and personal prose.
Beyond Software Architecture – Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions – by Luke Hohmann
Monday, March 24th, 2008In Beyond Software Architecture, Luke Hohmann addresses all things paramount to software product development that are usually not covered in books on software development. These things include licensing, software protection, branding, marketing and business plans and how they relate to the technical architecture and more. Every developer or architect that has been around a few projects probably will probably recognize the importance of some, if not all of these areas, in relation to creating and sustaining a winning solution.
The first and probably most important topic covered is the relation between the business model and the technical architecture. It is really an understatement to claim that the chosen business model has a serious and real impact on the technical architecture – it should be self evident that there the architecture will look quite different in an ASP scenario and a single user desktop application… Less self evident is the relation between the business plan and the technical architecture. What business segments are being targeted and in which order really does bear on the architecture. Each business segment will have its particular needs to be addressed as features in the software solution. The order is important since it will help spell out the technical roadmap for future releases.
The book covers a large number of topics and gives advice on a number of specific issues, too many to cover here. I have chosen but a few that have stuck after finishing the book.