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March 19, 2003
Methodologies for design
Someone mentioned on SIGIA today (god, he's still reading that thing?) The Dynamic Systems Development Method, one of the "agile" systems design methodologies that predates most IA work. It looks to be a reasonably user-centered process that would suit me fine if I was on a team using it.
There's an astoundingly pointless thread about methodologies in general on SIGIA the last few days. If I'd even once been on a project that went according to plan, maybe I'd be more interested. Sure, Adaptive Path's methods look good, and Contextual Design offers a lot of useful things.
But no one addresses the huge pink elephant standing in the room: all projects go wacky somewhere along the line, and plans and processes are tossed out the window, and the team basically improvises.
There are a lot of reasons to knock dot.coms, but when I worked at Smartprice.com, having a smart Program Manager riding herd on the development team, and a good Project Manager overseeing all the rest of us made more difference than any methodology would have. We weren't following any process other than "let's get something reasonable down on paper and on whiteboards before we start coding, then let's plan the development period carefully", but everyone knew what they had to do when, and someone could say immediately whether we were on time or not, and whose deliverables were needed next.
Posted by Andrew at March 19, 2003 11:03 AM