development

Lean production has made it possible for many industries to develop products faster and more profitably, building a loyal customer base while lowering business risk. Now, Lean has proven it can do the same for software development-and do so better than any development approach to date. Lean is more than a management system, method, tool, or environment; the areas where software methodologies normally focus. Lean is a worldview-a way of thinking that fundamentally changes and humanizes industry. The power of Lean is in the goals it leads us to pursue and the ways in which we coordinate our work. Therefore, Lean allows us to continue using many of our current software techniques. James Sutton returns to the beginnings of Lean, as conceived in the mind of W. Edwards Deming, and moves forward in time to compare and contrast Lean with agile development.

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is the practice of writing a test before writing code that implements the tested behavior, thus finding defects earlier. Rob Myers explains the two basic types of TDD: the original unit-level approach used mostly by developers, and the agile-inspired Acceptance-Test Driven Development (ATDD) which involves the entire team. Rob has experienced various difficulties in adopting TDD: developers who don't spend a few extra moments to look for and clean up a new bit of code duplication; inexperienced coaches who confuse the developer-style TDD with the team ATDD; and waffling over the use of TDD, which limits its effectiveness. The resistance (overt or subtle) to these practices that can help developers' succeed is deeply rooted in our brains and our cultures.

"Quality" is one of the most misunderstood and elusive aspects of system development. Ask five people to define quality and you'll probably get five different answers. Although everyone thinks he knows what it is, very few can really define it in context. High quality software doesn't just happen-quality must be built in from the start. In this highly interactive presentation, Tom Staab defines quality and explains why quality planning is important. Join in the discussion about where most defects are injected into software, how to establish meaningful quality metrics, ways to communicate results to management in language they understand, and how to calculate the return-on-investment that can be expected from quality improvement activities. Quality must be defined in a project's specific context, quantified at the beginning of the project, and measured throughout the development lifecycle.

As agile software development leaves the early adoption stage and moves solidly into the mainstream, Mary Poppendieck reminds us that fads in software development have come and gone before. What makes us think that agile is different? Unless we learn from previous attempts to improve development practices, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Mary describes three proven paths to failure: (1) Copy what successful companies are doing-You don't get to be world class by chasing after best practices, you get there by inventing them; (2) Force everyone to follow the standard process-The best path to success is leveraging the intelligence of "ordinary" people in the relentless improvement of your current process; and (3) Focus on technical success-Technical success is a euphemism for business failure.