Gary Thompson. Random thoughts.

Follow-up on duct tape programmers

2009-10-08T19:21:00.001+01:00

Just read Beating the duct programmer with generic domains, subdomains, and core domains. Great explanation of when you want to apply software engineering and duct tape programming. As I’ve said before - there is a time and place for good software engineering and a time to just get the job done.

If only there were more duct tape programmers

2009-09-26T21:42:00.002+01:00

Give me a pragmatic programmer any day, there is a time and a place for purists and perfectionism…normally when you have 20 million in the bank.

Please don’t get me wrong all teams need a balance of staff but when you are under pressure you need the guy willing throw the “design patterns” book away so the job can be done quickly.

Anyway, anyone who works with me will know how much I harp on about technical debt, well there is a great entry by Joel Spolsky called “The Duct Tape Programmer”. It’s not about technical debt but about developers who aren’t purists but certainly know how to get the job done, and understand the business need for getting it done as quickly as possible.

Go read The Duct Tape Programmer .

Technical debt doesn’t have to occur because of a rush job, it can happen through being too clever. If nobody else can understand your code unless they have a PhD in Astrophysics then you have technical debt.

Talking about must read articles I read Freakonomics this month, great book – made me laugh and go wow!

Technical Debt, JIRA, priority and severity

2009-09-15T19:15:00.001+01:00

“efficiency is about doing things right, while effectiveness is about doing the right things”

JIRA is a great issue/task tracking system but I’m not convinced not having a severity field by default is a good idea, their explanation is;

“The Severity field was removed for a number of reasons, but principally because it was confusing to business users. To a software developer, it seems obvious that the severity of the bug ("The system crashes completely") is unrelated to the priority of it ("There is a one in a million chance of this occurring"). However, JIRA succeeds so well because business users can actually use it. If you present a business user with these two fields, they are instantly confusing (which is why the Severity field was removed). “

This is a convincing argument. Although, I would suggest that not having severity over simplifies the decision making process. A decision probably best answered for each project individually – experience tells me the business is more inclined to be upset if they create a high severity record and the tech team mark it as low priority.

Decision making

As well as severity and priority should all projects now consider Technical Debt and Financial Cost associated with work items?

Managers require data to enable effective decision making, while a developer may perceive more fields as just being an additional overhead distracting them getting the job done. Technical staff need to be aware of the business benefits and costs of doing something. Spending days refactoring code because the coding standards are not met is not effective if a bug was never reported to do with the code. This is especially true when critical issues aren’t investigated.

I believe Priority, Severity are indicators of technical debt and time to resolve the task is the financial cost. Is it possible to put a value on technical debt? I’m not convinced there is, what I do know is that not paying it off early enough can be very, very expensive in the long term.

As a manager it is important to listen to a team concerned about issues in code and design, the team are responsible for effectively communicating their concerns.

Worthwhile reads – completely un-related to this blog entry but got me thinking…..

The Kumbaya irony - Are you having fun with technology for no apparent business reason.

What is Participative Leadership? – getting staff involved in making decisions.

Bibliography

Why doesn't JIRA have a Severity field like Bugzilla?

Technical debt

Finding the value in technical debt

Refinance Your Technical Debt Just Like Your Mortgage

Paying Down Your Technical Debt

Technical Debt – great diagrams!

Your Greater-Than-Yourself Project

2009-05-07T08:24:00.001+01:00

“Greater than Yourself”, is a great principle principle to have but I’m not convinced it can be achieved in isolation, unless you feel critical mass can be achieved.

Helping others to achieve their potential is something I’ve tried to apply in my working life, to varying degrees of success. The Harvard Business article “Your Greater-Than-Yourself Project” defines a concept to developing others and has certainly focused my mind on where I and others have done it well or poorly.

Whether you are an executive, team leader or junior in a team I think it is invaluable advise – I’m just not sure how easy it is to be completely selfless, especially when times are hard. A nice principle to aspire to.

The article states that the mentor should expect nothing in return, I have always believed that growing a network of successful people means that I can be more successful, so maybe I’m not entirely selfless.

References:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/04/the_secret_of_great_mentors.html

New addition to the family

2009-04-09T21:09:00.001+01:00

New addition to the family, originally uploaded by garyt70.

With a look like this how could anyone not want Willow to be part of our family.

Think….

2009-04-01T02:45:00.001+01:00

What would you do if your Facebook, YouTube or Blogger account was removed????

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/youtube-is-not-the-internet-but-she-has-a-point/

I don’t expect everyone to agree with the content of the video contained in the above blog (that’s assuming YouTube hasn’t removed it of course, and it’s not obscene, just food for thought). It does make me think about what would happen if Google decided my blogger account was unacceptable and deleted it.

Patent wars stifle innovation

2009-03-19T13:27:00.001Z

Interesting that Red Hat seems to think it owns the rights to XML data routing. Altio has a similar, if not the same, patent claim from 2003. At present Altio does not want to get into a legal battle over who’s patent is more valid, preferring the innovation approach to stay ahead of the game.

Software patents are a controversial subject with strong feelings amongst the developer community, I feel they are now a part of running a software development company. If you do not wish to take the patent path then it is important to ensure you make a public statement about an innovation. Without public knowledge an organisation is at risk of a megavendor claiming a patent and making life very difficult for small software houses.

Unless an organisation can innovate faster and better than everyone else and are not concerned who uses the innovation then I feel patents, as a defensive measure, are necessary. The problem with being innovative is that it costs money upfront, using somebody else’s idea is easy if you have lots of cash available. Sometimes the small vendors may just need to make a stand and use their patent for financial gain and maintaining market position.

Ideally software companies would get on with being innovative and writing good quality software. Instead all the big players look for are ways to make a quick buck at the expense of innovation. If you’re an innovator you just want to write good code, not fight legal battles.

It appears software patent litigation may become a normal part of being in the software industry.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/16/red_hat_patent_app_dynamic_routing/

http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20090305ptan20090063418.php

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=GB2002005577&wo=2003049369&DISPLAY=CLAIMS

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/whats_wrong_with_software_patents

Delegate, and bite your lip, but don’t stop communicating.

2009-03-15T21:17:00.001Z

One of my greatest frustrations at being a manager and solution designer is coming from a software development background and having to delegate coding tasks.

So why do I delegate and get frustrated.

I delegate because I do not have the time to do everything I want to get done. I have to rely upon others to do what I once could easily have done. Delegation and communication is what makes an effective team and team leader.

My frustration isn’t because I think I can do it better (well maybe it is sometimes), it occurs when someone finds excuses to not do the job properly – this can be colleagues at work or a teenage son. If you are going to do a task, even if it is for a demo then do the work properly and as if you are going to sell it later – in the case of software this may well be the case and so you want to avoid financial and technical debt.

So while a may I feel like telling people to “just get on and do what I asked”, this wouldn’t always be effective. Delegation relies upon effective communication, and sometimes this means cajoling someone into delivering what you want rather than what makes their life easy, this can be quite frustrating especially if you have to keep doing it.

Enabling someone else to do a job requires

they know what you want

they have the authority to achieve it

they know how to do it.

If you feel above three items have been done then it is down to the person you have delegated to to communicate effectively with you, especially if they are unsure of their responsibility and what is expected of them. Otherwise the task is at risk of failure.

Every article you read on project failures should mention “lack of communication” as one of the causes. Poor requirements lead to misunderstanding, lack of developer feedback and demo’s leads to misunderstanding – especially in agile projects.

So you can delegate and bite your lip when getting frustrated but don’t stop communicating otherwise you are at risk of not delivering the task.

You can delegate the work but not the responsibility!

Bibliography

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Management/art5.html

http://www.bizhelp24.com/employment-and-personal-development/the-art-of-delegation-2.html

http://www.talkbiz.com/digest/emt17.html

http://thompson-web.blogspot.com/2008/04/project-estimation-duration-effort-and.html

Protectionism Leads to Conflict

2009-03-08T15:58:00.001Z

I recently subscribed to Executive Advisory and the most important entry on any blog I have read recently is on the subject of protectionism within the organisation.

http://eapblog.burtongroup.com/executive_advisory_progra/2009/03/protectionism-leads-to-conflict.html

As far as I am concerned it is everyone’s responsibility (politicians, executives, staff etc) to identify when protectionism is impacting the chances of success, effort should be focused more upon working collaboratively so that everyone gains.

If you type “protectionism” or “psychology protectionism” into Google or any other search engine you will see there are numerous articles in favour or against protectionism. So I guess everyone has a choice to make.

For me right now I am against protectionism, I see it as damaging for both organisations, relationships, and economies.

JQuery, XML and namespaces

2009-03-08T04:18:00.001Z

Being awake at the early hours of the morning I decided to try and take my mind off of product strategy and increasing market share, so I decided to play around with Altio 5.3 (pre beta) REST services.

The challenge I set myself was to use JQuery to retrieve data through the AltioLive Presentation Server (APS). I thought it would be easy, after all it’s easy in AltioLive.

The problem I encountered was namespaces.

It seems JQuery doesn’t handle namespaces very well, as described in ticket 155.

The solution for me was to use the following syntax ‘namespace\\:element_name’ ;

<atom:entry xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
...
<atom:content type="text">blah blah</atom:content>
</atom:entry>

Now if that document is stored in a variable named xml:

$(xml).find('atom\\:content').eq(0).text()

Will return the text of the atom:content element.

I found this out courtesy of www.xml.com http://www.xml.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/4298.

Not sure if the syntax is correct, but it works in FF and IE using JQuery 1.3.2. I managed to read a fair number of blog entries, and information on processing XML with namespaces, the above was the only approach that worked for me.

Other sources of info:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/10/10/jquery-and-xml.html

Technical debt

2009-02-27T16:38:00.002Z

What a great term “technical debt”.

I picked the term up from Martin Fowlers blog entry call “Technical Debt”. You also need to watch the video talk by Ward Cunningham to understand the background to the metaphor.

Debt

When developing software you can accrue two types of debt, financial and technical. Both can result in the failure of a project or organisation.

Financial debt is common to everyone – you have to pay salaries, rent and for computers etc. If you are lucky this is paid for through income, otherwise by borrowing.

Technical debt according to Cunningham is not about poor code but writing the best code given your understanding at the time. You can rush software out of the door, but you incur debts which may need to be paid back. I say “may” because if the software is not successful or is meant to be thrown away as an experiment, who cares if you cut corners. Unless of course the reason for failure is because you cut corners.

Don’t accumulate financial debt for the sake of reducing technical debt unless you are very confident of success.

Technical debt can be as crippling to the roadmap of a product as financial debt. I feel the difficulty for someone managing software projects is balancing both debts and negotiating with stakeholders and development teams to get debt balance right.

Don’t pass the debt on

My personal choice is to write the best interface to the outside world in the hope that end users not impacted by later changes. If you don’t put enough effort into achieving high quality external interfaces then you are passing your debt on to others, especially if changes need to occur later.

This may mean that the internal features not expected to be used by others must accrue your technical debt. The technical debt has to be paid back through refactoring later.

Don’t hide the debt

As the financial credit crunch has shown hiding bad debts in clever delivery mechanisms can only lead to disaster, especially when it gets to the point when nobody understands what is going on, or does not want to understand because things are great at that moment in time. If the project is accruing debt make contingency plans, and make it clear to stakeholders why the contingency plan is required and the risk the project is exposed to.

The bottom line

Don’t try to achieve perfection first time, unless you have lots of money to spend. Get the balance between a perfect system that you can be proud of and a system that delivers business benefit with the least financial and technical debt.

Financial debt is short term, technical debt is long term but can be addressed after first succeeding, once the money is flowing you won’t incur further financial debt.

Finally, it is better to deliver a working project than to never complete a perfect project.

Forgot to add this reference: http://blogs.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx

View from my new office - sunset

2009-02-12T05:51:00.001Z

View from my new office - sunset, originally uploaded by garyt70.

January has been extraordinarily busy, February is working out to be the same.

Decided to make at least one post that stays in place after several failed attempts to do a blog entry with JavaScript and DHTML.

This Photo is from the office window in the building Altio has moved to, nice views all around.

Agile explained in simple terms

2009-01-23T13:15:00.001Z

Neill, sent this link to me http://www.vimeo.com/user1195135/videos, I think its a great way of using Lego and learning Agile software delivery.

Neill, learn to use your Google phone to twitter! You could then post a video of it :-)

User Stories from Agile Advocate on Vimeo.

26 - 30 Jan - Altio Roadmap - USA Clients

2009-01-20T20:06:00.001Z

Next week I'm going to be visiting a number of cities in the US discussing the AltioLive roadmap with clients. If anyone is interested in meeting for breakfast or in the evening to discuss RIA technology trends and the Altio roadmap drop me a line at gary.thompson@altio.com . It's quite a busy schedule so I can't promise to meet all requests.

Itinerary

26 Jan - Palo Alto, San Franciso

27 Jan - Palo Alto, San Franciso, up until 11am when I fly to New York

28 Jan - New York

29 Jan - New York (morning), Boston (afternoon)

30 Jan - Boston

Roadmap agenda - usability of RIA applications, report generation, user computing, rapid development of RIA applications.

Australia - the missing weeks

2009-01-20T20:02:00.001Z

OK, due to the lack of Internet access I didn't manage to blog everyday when in Australia and so have decided to do a late update on the trip. More as a reminder to me of a great holiday (photos are on Flickr).

Sydney – Tuesday, 16 December

Blue Mountains – well worth the journey into the mountains for some spectacular views. I have to admit getting the late tour out of Sydney was a bit of a mistake as it meant trying to cram too much into the day.

Sydney – Wednesday, 17 December

Sydney Botanical Gardens – everyone got up late after a long day yesterday, so we spent 5 hours exploring the Botanical gardens looking for parrots, bats and other native Australian wildlife. Oh and we looked at some plants as well.

Sydney to Brisbane – Port Stephens, 18 December

Lots of travelling. The camper van is HUGE, it’s like driving a 7 ton lorry. I can now say I am now one of those people who can cause a 1 mile tailback of traffic.

I was impressed by how helpful Australian police are, I guess they are used to Poms getting lost looking for Lemon Tree Passage (Port Stephens), not so sure British police would print maps and even try to see if a patrol car is going in the same direction.

We spent our first night in a camper van right on the edge of a river. I have to admit it takes some getting used to seeing Parrots and lizards wherever you go.

Sydney to Brisbane – Coffs Harbour, 19, 20 December

OK, Australia is seriously big, and I’m not convinced their 1km is the same as the rest of the world. Over 400km today, by the time you travel up and down several mountains I’m sure it was more like 600km. I’ve discovered you can get a 7 metre camper vans around some very tight bends – at one point there was nothing to the left except a 100m drop. Future note, when driving camper vans through Australia carefully consider the use of some tourist routes, they can be a major detour and take hours to complete.

Stayed at Darlington beach campsite just outside Coffs Harbour. The campsite is literally on the Corindi beach so you get to listen to the sea while watching the Lorikeets (birds a bit like Parrots).

Sydney to Brisbane – Tweed Heads, 21 December

Final stretch. Had to make a stop at Byron Bay, the most easterly point in Australia. As we had the camper van it wasn’t possible to drive to the lighthouse – something about the roads being too narrow. So we had a choice of walking 2.2km along a road or 1.5km through the woods.

The vote went of the scenic 1.5km walk. When it’s over 30C and you walking up some very steep slopes 1.5km feels like a very long way.

On eventually reaching our next campsite all we wanted to do was wallow in the swimming pool. I have to admit we have all spent more time in swimming pools than we ever would in the UK – I can’t see how Australians could survive without one.

Brisbane, 22 December

Koalas, Kangaroos, Possums, and Lizards – we went to Lone Pine Koala Animal sanctuary to cuddle Koalas and feed Kangaroos, well worth a visit.

Oh buy the way as Milly found out when cuddling Koalas you need to be aware that they poo (A LOT), and you have to hold their bums, yukkkkk.

Port Douglas – 23 to 28 December

Daintree River, Kuranda Railway and Cable Car, Relaxation, Great Barrier Reef.

I have to say if you get a chance to go to Australia then visit Port Douglas. There are no franchises, so no Starbucks, McDonalds etc. This means you can really separate yourself from the rat race in the rest of the world. If I should be lucky enough to return to Australia I will make sure Port Douglas and the Sea Temple is on my itinerary.

Brisbane, 29 December

Thunderstorms.

Our last night in Australia was spent watching a fantastic storm.

Conclusion

If I could repeat this holiday I would skip the camper van and fly direct to Brisbane and then hire a car. Aside from that this was a perfect holiday. 2 weeks on and back at work is depressing as it feels like the holiday was years ago.

Sydney – Monday, 15 December

2008-12-16T11:04:00.000Z

Manly - the kids first experience of Australian beaches and surfing. Manly schools physical education involves cross-country (running along the beach), followed by swimming and surfing. Connor decided to be all shy when he got the offer to join in with the surfing lessons – what is it with kids, it looked great!

I really like the idea of commuting by ferry everywhere, so much more civilised and relaxed. Well that was until we got the ferry back from Manly and we hit the waves from the sea, the ferry was rolling around like a roller coaster (sea, sky, sea, sky….). Yep, Milly and Connor thought it was great – all I could do was look for the life jackets and rafts.

Sydney – Sunday, 14 December

2008-12-14T10:29:00.001Z

Kids seem to have a thing about the Rocks market, something to do with spending all their money as soon as possible.

To compensate for being dragged around the market again I thought I’d do something educational, so we went to the Museum of Cotemporary Art (MCA) at Sydney Harbour – turns out they have it all set up for kids, Milly and Connor really enjoyed going around with clipboards making their own art and answering questions about the artwork.

Fish and chips at Doyles a fish restaurant right on the seafront of Watson Bay – superb food at a reasonable price. OK, maybe expensive by Australian standard, but well worth it. Connor thought the Snapper was a Piranha, first time the kids have had fish that came with heads on.

Sydney – Saturday, 13 December

2008-12-13T21:27:00.002Z

Wow, what a difference the day makes. Temperature was 35C cloudy in the morning and seriously sunny in the afternoon. We explored Circular Key – Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, then got a ferry to Darling Harbour.

We’re staying in The Rocks district of Sydney with fantastic views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera house.

First stop of the day was breakfast, eat as much as you like for $19, this sounds expensive but we managed to get value for money out of it. I think its essential to get a good breakfast for a hard day ahead being a tourist :-)

First stop was the market, Connor looking for a boomerang and Milly to get jewellery or handbags. Sam decided to buy some traditional lemonade with Connor and Milly, kept them quiet for about 30 minutes because it was made with real lemon and I think it was seriously bitter.

Can’t tell what the highlight of the day for the kids was, they get excited about everything. Sydney Opera house in the morning, using Darling Harbour fountains and monuments as paddling pools in the afternoon. The use of any water feature seems to be an OK thing to do as everyone else was doing it.

Firework display in the evening ended the day off nicely.

Sydney – Friday, 12 December

2008-12-12T21:12:00.001Z

Oh boy what a nightmare flight, the lights in the cabin could not be switched off, so Milly decided she was going to stay awake for the whole of the night flight. This wouldn’t have been too bad if she left the rest of us alone, instead she decided keeping me, her Mum and brothers awake was good entertainment. The whole family were exhausted by the time we arrived at Sydney at 0645.

Staff at Quay West Suites were really helpful and got our room prepared by 10am, I think the fact that we looked like 5 vagabonds camped out in the hotel lobby helped!
Just to make things seem really bad, the temperature was only 18 C, and it was raining (hard) all day. So other than trying to get some sleep and food we didn’t do too much.

Singapore – Thursday, 11 December

2008-12-11T21:05:00.001Z

Duck Tours and Raffles Hotel – a day wandering around Singapore, plus our first experience of a tropical thunderstorm. Up until today we had not experienced any rain, and the humidity was bearable, luckily for us we were packing our bags for the next leg of the trip when the rain began to fall.

For a brilliant eating experience try the Singapore International Convention Centre food court. We gave the kids $10 each and they went off and ordered what they wanted, real value for money. Although, you will need to like Asian food otherwise the choice would be limited.

Off to Australia!

Singapore – Wednesday, 10 December

2008-12-10T20:43:00.000Z

Singapore zoo for breakfast with the Orang-utans, the kids loved it – must do experience. This was followed by the night safari…and yes another must do. The value for money was excellent and one of the best zoo’s I have ever been to.

I was expecting the humidity to be oppressive, but there was a nice breeze which helped. It's well worth paying for the ride around the park, you can just hop on and off, so when the kids get tired you can still get to the next part of the park.

Holiday, Singapore – Tuesday, 9 December

2008-12-09T20:39:00.000Z

Arrived late in the day, not as tired as we expected. Staying at the Shangri-la (http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/singapore/shangrila) was a very luxurious experience, maybe a bit extravagant; we had to avoid the restaurant, as it would have truly blown the budget for the 5 of us to eat there. Although, on hearing it was Connors birthday he received personalised cards, chocolates and a cake….he was certainly impressed.

The evening meal took place at a food court, I would recommend a visit to Newton Circus food court – lots of authentic dishes and experiences. Probably the best fried rice anywhere.

September ends...it's all doom and gloom

2008-10-10T20:35:00.003+01:00

I had a great time at Wembley Arena on the 21 Sept. The concert exceeded my expectations, I was amazed at the age range of people there and I was very glad I wasn't the the eldest.

I'm determined to keep a positive attitude through these very worrying times. Although I am not sure it's going to be easy. Still on the really positive side I have a holiday in Australia to look forward to. I also keep reminding myself that it is times like this when some of the best opportunities arise.

I still seem to be racking up the air miles, Washington in September and off to Boston again next week. I'll need my holiday in Australia after this year.

Why does AltioLive have its own IDE?

2008-10-07T11:44:00.001+01:00

An IDE is one of the richest forms of user interface.

Back in 1999 the original reason for having an Altio IDE was that there was no dominant IDE in the market place, and show casing your products capabilities in an IDE was a good way of demonstrating what can be achieved.

Being a Java based product it could now be argued that AltioLive applications should be editable using common IDE's, such as Eclipse and NetBeans. This still does not remove the fact that if a tool is so good then why isn't the IDE written using its own base language. AltioLive is a tool for creating Rich Web Applications so its IDE should be a rich web application.

The Altio team is now striving to deliver a framework that can be used by a broad spectrum of people with varying software skills. At present we lie somewhere between a development tool and a power user tool. AltioLive will appeal to:

software developers with little experience of creating user interfaces and do not want to understand the complexities of the Java Swing API's. But, the solution they may want to deliver requires a highly scaleable and rich user interface within the web browser.
experienced Java developers that want to build their own user interface controls but do not want to build a whole integration framework to the server. They want 80% of the work done for them so that they can get on with the specific needs of the project.
consultants who want the ability to deliver a rich web application that has security, server push data delivery, reusability and most of all the ability to deliver a user interface solution as quickly as possible.
designers, and business analysts who want to be able to define a user interface and possibly implement early prototypes without the need to rely upon a development team early in the project.

The above points are not an extensive list, AltioLive is used as an OEM tool within larger products to allow the development of highly customisable, maintainable user interfaces. It is also used within financial institutes to deliver very rich and interactive user interfaces where data is pushed from the server to multiple users.

AltioLive applications can be edited within Eclipse or a simple text editor if you really want to, after all the underlying logic and screen definition are written to XML files in a declarative language. Many of our competitors take this approach now, the strength of Altio is WYSIWYG, you build the user interface interactively.

The bottom line is that I want to see Altio deliver a simple to use application development tool that can be used by someone with the most basic programming knowledge. This in turn should mean the performance of project teams in increased, thus increasing the chances of delivering IT projects at cost and on time.

originally posted to www.altio.com

Design Methodologies - where do you want to spend your money?

2008-09-22T10:07:00.001+01:00

I recently revisited articles on design methodologies, specifically TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) and Agile methodologies. Initially, I thought that both approaches contradict each other and so could not be used together. However, like writing software you combine best practices from different methodologies that meet your project requirements, improving the chances of a successful project.

I'm not going to try and pretend to be a TOGAF professional, I have an awareness of the framework and have never used it end to end. I believe that if you are going to design software then you should at least be aware of frameworks such as TOGAF and alternatives. A good start on agile is Martin Fowler "The New Methodology" and "Can SOA be done with an agile approach".

TOGAF combined with Zachman framework is a top down design methodology and provides an excellent mechanism for eliciting requirements and providing a framework for communication in a common language, but as Fowler states big up front design can become very expensive. Also, it can lead a project to not deliver what is required by the business when the system goes live, rather it delivers what was required initially. The difference may well be dramatic.

A good reason for top down design is to do with procurement and the need to identify appropriate commercial products to use, a focus of TOGAF. Large organisations want to outsource at fixed price and the vendor organisation doing the work wants all the details up front to have the best chance of delivering the project at a profit. Again, Fowler makes a good point about the "Adaptive Customer" and how customers need to be adaptive in the way they engage with vendors. Although from my experience of being both the vendor and using vendors to do work there is never an ideal approach. A vendor wants to make as much money as possible while the customer wants to control the scope and spend as little as possible.

So where do you want to spend your money?

Up front with lots of design, then on lots of change requests and the end result will be lots of documentation that in theory should reduce the maintenance overheads, keeping the future costs down.

The alternative is relying upon highly skilled and talented software engineers who may or may not use a silver bullet, document the code or write any design material thus making maintenance harder for someone un-familiar with the code.

I have seen both top down and bottom up methodologies succeed and fail to varying degrees. It is my opinion that success is based upon good judgement and adaptability at the beginning and during the project on the part of everyone involved.

Combining the requirement analysis and control features of TOGAF with an Agile methodology, and the use of PRINCE project management looks like a good combination as long as you are adaptable in selecting the parts that make most sense for the project you are working on.