Re: [AM] Too ambitious?

At 01:18 AM 3/11/2004, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I've been subscribed to this list for quite some time now and have always 
>enjoyed learning from the postings here.
>
>This is my first posting and its probably not totally related to Agile 
>processes at all... but more on soliciting advice as to whether I am being 
>too ambitious in my current situation...
>
>Compared to most of the people here, I consider myself really junior with 
>only about 5.5 yrs of software development experience... Been working in 
>the software industry for 7.5 yrs, but the last 2 yrs has been pretty much 
>architecting on paper without much opportunity for hands-on coding work... 
>I know... still very fresh! :)
>
>Anyway, I recently joined a software organization that builds front-end 
>applications for banks (like internet banking and credit mgmt workflow 
>applications) that does not believe in modeling, or rather, they 'believe' 
>in modeling, but project timeframe quoted to customers typically does not 
>justify it.


Have they taken a look at www.agilemodeling.com/essays/amdd.htm at 
all?  Seems like a low investment, high-payback approach to me.

They may still by thinking that you must take a serial approach to modeling.




>Instead of modeling or designing, they are more into developing software 
>templates that are then passed on to developers to "copy and fill-in the 
>empty bits".

Sounds like a slow way to do it, the people doing that could be bottlenecks.


>Probably the only design done before coding is probably the database 
>design... and screen flow design (which is aka Functional Specifications 
>here). Doing so allow them to produce modules very quickly... although 
>there are quite a lot of quality issues popping up in past projects these 
>days.... but that's another story... :-)


Stuff happens.

>
>Anyway, the organization is now thinking of moving into building their own 
>product (for example, an Internet Bank product) that will be sold and 
>customized for each individual bank as the profit margin is higher this 
>way.... As luck would have it, yours truly has been selected to be the 
>software architect for this productization effort (maybe due to my 
>excessive preaching on the use of modeling and design).

Congratulations!


>  I see this as an opportunity to drive the organization towards a 
> model/design first before build culture. On the other hand, I am also 
> apprehensive of the fact that I will be working with people (developers 
> as well as business analysts) who come from the traditional "template" 
> approach as well as Project managers that follows Waterfall lifecycle 
> models rather than iterative-incremental approaches.

That's going to be challenging.  You'll need to find a good middle ground 
with these people.

>  I would say that probably I would be the only person on the team with 
> some experience in modeling (and I am not very experienced at that!).This 
> leads me to think that this could potentially back-fire and encourage the 
> disbelief of the organization on modeling and design.

Yes, there's a huge danger here.  You should consider involving someone 
with significant modeling experience.


>
>In addition to corporate culture, the development process that I will be 
>facing is probably not going to be iterative-incremental... and inputs 
>will probably still be Functional Specs (containing just screen design 
>with field descriptions and logic description)...
>
>I've said a lot... but I guess to sum it all up, I just wanted to find out 
>if I am being too ambitious to try to get the entire team to do modeling 
>and design first before coding as well as solicit as much advice as I can 
>from all the experienced people here on how to approach this.


My suggestion would be to lead by example.  Get them involved in the 
modeling effort but also allow them to do what they're good at too.  Try to 
be as iterative and incremental as possible.  Perhaps try to convince them 
to follow an "extended AMDD" approach where you do a little more modeling 
up front than I would normally suggest, perhaps several weeks, to make them 
comfortable with the concept, but don't strive to get the models 
complete.  Then evolve the models as you need.  I'd also suggest pushing 
for iterations, perhaps longer ones (4-6 weeks at first) to get them 
comfortable with the concept.

- Scott

>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Steven.

====================================================
Scott W. Ambler
Senior Consultant, Ronin International, Inc.
www.ronin-intl.com/company/scottAmbler.html

www.agiledata.org
www.agilemodeling.com
www.ambysoft.com
www.enterpriseunifiedprocess.info
www.modelingstyle.info
www.ronin-intl.com

For more information about AM, visit the Agile Modeling Home Page at www.agilemodeling.com
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