[Gllug] Development Methodologies

[Richard]

Richard Jones wrote:

>On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 02:59:13PM +0000, Richard wrote:
>  
>
>>Fair enough, but how are the others run? [...]
>>    
>>
>
>Small team, intelligent developers, capable programming language,
>rapid iterative development directly involving the end users.  Works
>for us anyway.
>
>  
>
I wonder how far this scales, personally. I think that you're absolutely 
right that this is a great model for small-medium projects - but when 
the scope of the project creeps outside a manageable group of users (ie: 
representatives of all the different user groups can't reasonably be 
involved simultaneously), and/or the requirements simply don't allow a 
small team to complete the project in a reasonable timescale, what then? 
What of the poor CIO's ego when they can't have huge, sexy budgets for 
enormous, unwieldy projects? What of empty promises like Model Driven 
Architecture?

ThoughtWorks, Martin Fowler et al. talk up an XP-like development 
methodology for enterprise systems, and I wonder what it looks like. If 
anyone can explain the guts of it, then I'm all ears.

My rule of thumb has been that the upper limit on the size of a 
development team is about eight, but six is probably better - and 
anything they can't achieve is a symptom of a poorly scoped project. In 
essence, I agree with what you're saying; but I'm playing a bit of the 
devil's advocate here. I'm watching a floundering bid in the £XX,000,000 
region as I write... What odds of a successful delivery? I give it slim 
to none.

Richard
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