Thursday, July 2, 2009

My favorite development process


After years of experience, I identified three kind of development processes that are commonly used for projects, according to their size, complexity, etc.




  1. Direct coding in a scripting language (like perl),
  2. writing code from requirements,
  3. writing code from specification documents.
Direct coding should be reserved for PoC and small projects, clearly doesn't scale, and is not suitable for teams. Requirements and specifications seem close, but actually it is a very different approach. The requirement gives no guidance on the implementation and comes usually from the marketing team. The specification is a very precise guide to the implementation but doesn't justify its content.

I've experienced the three modes, on volunteer basis or not, and eventually the one I prefer is... the fourth way!

What is the fourth way ? It's simply coding from the user manual. All the jigsaw that constitutes a project is supposed to take all its sense in the user manual. Start a project by writing the user manual is directly taking the customer point of view. The API is not only specified, it is explained. If a part cannot be explained clearly, it's likely there is a serious problem with it. And if it happens once the development is over, unfortunately it's too late...

Unlike the requirements, the user manual doesn't describe what the user needs, but what the user can do. The (functional) specification describes how the project behaves, so does the user manual which also tells how to use it.

When times come to write real code, the API and most of the comments are ready, which clearly accelerates the implementation step. The developer can focus on the algorithms and data structures. Unit tests can be prepared very early, too.

As usual it happens that unexpected implementation details has an impact on the user manual. Api must change to cope with a specific problem. The user manual is then updated. and coding can resume. Not a big deal, though, this kind of iteration belongs to agile development process.

In my experience writing the user manual first is very positive. And last but not least, as a side effect the documentation is always ready on time !