Comments on: The role of models in Agile and Model Driven Development approaches http://jorgemanrubia.net/2009/04/05/the-role-of-models-in-agile-and-mde-development-approaches/ Personal Page Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:24:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Mike Jones http://jorgemanrubia.net/2009/04/05/the-role-of-models-in-agile-and-mde-development-approaches/comment-page-1/#comment-165 Mike Jones Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:02:42 +0000 http://jorgemanrubia.net/2009/04/05/the-role-of-models-in-agile-and-mde-development-approaches/#comment-165 <p>Models cannot be converted into code easily? I have to disagree with this statement. If you have been a developer for more than, say 12 years, you will undoubtedly remember the days of CASE tools. Several of these products did an excellent job of generating code from models. The problem was that the models were developed using a waterfall approach (Information Engineering was the most common method) which ended not accurately representing the business need. And since we spent all the time up front modeling to get it 'right' we did not show the end users a working solution until everything was done. The end result, applications that did not meet end user expectations, were late and cost more than estimated.</p> <p>In my experience Agile directly addresses the issue of an inability to accurately specify exactly what the business needs as a requirement. Why? Until the end users see the working application they cannot accurately imagine how it will support their process and how they might modify their working process to accommodate automation. Thus Agile's iterative approach allows us to deliver early and often taking into account feedback from the end user community as we go resulting in fit for purpose applications that only deliver the needed functionality to meet business needs! Of course if we manage the project, its backlog and work with the business to trade high value needs for lower value items we end up delivering on time and in budget!</p> <p>To learn more about the approach we use go read our methodology white paper titled ‘Eight stages of an Agile approach that works’. You can find it at this link under white papers: http://tinyurl.com/dmnf8w.</p> Models cannot be converted into code easily? I have to disagree with this statement. If you have been a developer for more than, say 12 years, you will undoubtedly remember the days of CASE tools. Several of these products did an excellent job of generating code from models. The problem was that the models were developed using a waterfall approach (Information Engineering was the most common method) which ended not accurately representing the business need. And since we spent all the time up front modeling to get it ‘right’ we did not show the end users a working solution until everything was done. The end result, applications that did not meet end user expectations, were late and cost more than estimated.

In my experience Agile directly addresses the issue of an inability to accurately specify exactly what the business needs as a requirement. Why? Until the end users see the working application they cannot accurately imagine how it will support their process and how they might modify their working process to accommodate automation. Thus Agile’s iterative approach allows us to deliver early and often taking into account feedback from the end user community as we go resulting in fit for purpose applications that only deliver the needed functionality to meet business needs! Of course if we manage the project, its backlog and work with the business to trade high value needs for lower value items we end up delivering on time and in budget!

To learn more about the approach we use go read our methodology white paper titled ‘Eight stages of an Agile approach that works’. You can find it at this link under white papers: http://tinyurl.com/dmnf8w.

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