Re: Re: Sticking point

So said  Dale Emery <[email protected]>  on  12/14/2002 --------------------

>Hi J. B.,
>
>> All right. Let's step back from the shippable CD, then. I'll take a
>> few steps back and see where the sweet spot is. Go down the list
>> until you find the first thing you think provides business value
>> every iteration.
>>
>> 1. A physical CD with working features to date.
>> 2. An install image of the working features to date, available on an
>> internal network.
>> 3. An install image of the working features to date sitting on
>> someone's machine.
>> 4. A version of the working features to date installed on someone's
>> machine.
>> 5. A built, but unpackaged version of the working features to date.
>
>If it runs and demonstrates all of the features, #5 is the one.

That's about what I figured, although I'd go for #4, myself. In my experience, installation is difficult because it's usually under-tested. I would want to test installing the thing at every available opportunity.

>> > Are there other things that you practise on every iteration, even
>> > if you don't need the results on each iteration?
>>
>> All the XP practices, for 12.
>
>You don't need the results of those practices on each iteration?

Not necessarily. To pick an example, the result of Sustainable Pace is the ability to continue indefinitely at the same level of quality. We may be near the end of the project, so the ability to continue for a year or two years may be irrelevant.

That's a little trivial. Let me see whether I can think of something better.

>> Beyond that and shipping the software every iteration to get
>> feedback from the customer, I can't think of anything specific; but
>> then, I haven't been on an XP project in nearly a year. :)
>>
>> There's a clue in that last paragraph: if I don't ship the software
>> to the customer every iteration, how do I get feedback on the
>> running system?
>
>Invite the customer to your machine.

I'm not sure that's as good. The Customer needs time to play with the software -- more than 20 minutes. In fact, the fact that they only spent 20 minutes trying something out during the demo was the problem: we would get one or two decent pieces of feedback, but nothing more. I think there's more. I'd like to get it. I think the Customer needs to spend time with the software to really comment on it.

That said, inviting the customer to my machine is much better than nothing. If I otherwise can only get nothing, I will invite the customer to my machine.

J. B. Rainsberger,
President, Diaspar Software Services
Let's write software that people understand.
http://www.diasparsoftware.com/
telephone: +1 416 791-8603
All correspondence (c) 2002 Diaspar Software Services.
If you want to use it, just ask; don't steal.



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