Re: How to design proper classes when the requirements are quite complex?

From:

Mark Space <markspace@sbc.global.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:39:23 GMT

Message-ID:

<vL3Rj.1250$506.452@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>

Lew wrote:

Arne VajhQj wrote:

Lew wrote:

Mark Space wrote:

Two years is not that long for a new software project.

But it is way, way, waaaaaaay too long to wait for such a project to
produce any useful product.

If you are managing a software project, set it up so that first
useful product results start happening in about a week. A month is
not too soon to have a prototype of important basic features.

When the actual development start something should be delivered
frequently. Every 2 month or every 2 weeks or whatever (every week
sound as XXP though).

But the project start long time before that. It is not unusual
to spend 6 months on requirements.

Even requirements should work with prototypes iteratively.

Don't wait six months to put something on the screen. You might find
that it doesn't look or work the same on a computer as it did on paper.

For this to work, management must tolerate wholesale tossing out of
prototypes and complete rewrites in the coding phase, at least sometimes
and at least at first.

I was thinking the same as Arne. 6 months requirements + startup, 18
month development cycle.

Considering your line of work, your advocacy of prototyping and
iterative development is interesting. (You're a consultant, correct?) I
would consider such things wasteful on a large project (or even a small
one) but I suppose it might be needed to keep a client, sponsors (money
folks) and management happy.

"Two weeks" is a known fallacy for time estimates in project management,
but laymen might not understand that. It might be good to play to that
two week event horizon.