What's Covered in This Chapter

What's Covered in This Chapter The focus of this book is more on technology and less on process. However, this chapter provides an overview of an agile software development process that you can easily apply to your project. I'm a big believer in having a bare-minimum process, even if it is a 1-page checklist of 10 or so items that serves as a memory jogger for things that need to be done as part of the process. (Note: I have included such a checklist in the appendixes.) This minimal process ensures that the project is run efficiently and at the same time is focused on customer satisfaction. In this chapter, we will accomplish the following: Gain an understanding of what our sample application will do by looking at some business requirements. Establish a simple software methodology based on Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile Modeling Driven Development (AMDD). Develop some high-level artifacts such as a domain model, UI prototypes, high-level architecture, and more. Create a simple release plan based on our user stories. Note It is important to realize that many of the artifacts shown in this chapter (release and iteration plans, for example) are more for demonstration purposes. However, this chapter is very relevant to the rest of the book because we will implement some of the functionality described in this chapter (for example, the Enter Hours and Timesheet List screens). In general, you can ignore particulars such as dates and estimates. Also, this chapter assumes that you have a basic understanding of software development processrelated concepts (use cases, for example). However, if my brief explanations on the various concepts in this chapter aren't sufficient, I recommend visiting www.agilemodeling.com for detailed explanations. In general, this website is loaded with information relevant to this chapter. Also, visit the extremeprogramming.org website for detailed information on the XP methodology.