Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Monsey, NY
Posts: 33

A long standing question that I've been researching is "what ingredients are necessary for the most productive development efforts?" My research has focused on enterprise development projects.

The question has multiple fronts including people, tools, physical environment, workplace culture, team dynamics, and methodology just to name a few.

I tend to agree with the camp that the people are the most important criterion for success. I find the Agile software developments methodologies vs. RUP discussions very interesting.

J2EE vs. .Net is another interesting discussion.

Aspect Oriented Programming is another interesting topic.

Controversy and a constant barrage of new technologies and techniques are the driver for the answer.

Any thoughts?

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 492

These are some of the most important environmental aspects that I have seen over the years for successful projects (in order of priority):

1. A supportive management that not only knows the benefits that can come out of OO technology but also knows how to use OO technology the 'right way'.

2. A lead architect well versed in both OO design and development.

3. Good tools, usually a UML tool + an IDE. Also includes performance analysis tools, testing tools, web tools, XML tools, etc.

4. Competent business-process owners that provide clear requirements, use cases and functional specifications.

5. Iterative development.

6. Solid libraries of code that are reusable and well documented.

7. Lots of whiteboard sessions (agile development).


Our favorite books on this topic are Bruce Webster's Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development (sadly, out-of-print but a must-read) and all of Alistair Cockburn's books, which are excellent and 'outside-the-box'.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged