Holistic, Rational, Scientific Development: An Outline

From: Universe (universe_at_tAkEcovad.OuT.net)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:33:22 -0400

> > And as I see "rationalism" it's more so as I state in another post
> > today: the ability of proven knowledge - that is *theory* - to
> > rationally inform and *lead* our work practice.

I differ from Webster's in stressing that reason, theory, reasoning
conceptualization should play the *leading" role, in our activities
while practice should verify.

Directly opposed to that, philosophical pragmatism and empiricism that
underlie XP places greater emphasis on the results of recent, or
immediate practice. It favors the aphorism, "if it works do it".

Whereas I emphasize the value of studying prior, historical, or already
summarized experience in what we are doing and applying lessons learned
creatively according to specific context. This is the 1st part of what I
mean by "theory leads".

The 2nd part of what "theory leads" is that our current activity should
be mapped out in always amenable theory, ideas as a plan. "Amenable"
plans means that they may modified, or replaced in toto during the
course of project IID - iterative and incremental development.

Amenable plans should largely be constructed based upon:
        ` ideas, theory, thinking, concepts, reasoning from prior activity in
                contextually similar and relevant circumstances
        ` ideas, theory, thinking, concepts, reasoning resulting from
                investigation, and discovery of the current project context, and
                goals.

Plans may be modified based upon system user, management, domain expert,
or developer feedback from activities during the course of the project.
Projects should have:
        ` a panoply of mechanisms for eliciting and incorporating feedback
                during its IID
        ` multiple times of regularly scheduled feedback sessions between
                system users, management, domain experts, and or developers.

A 3rd related facet of this is that the project should evaluate, weigh,
tradeoff and otherwise make decisions with a holistic, systems
perspective. They should be made always after understanding and
considering together as whole, all key relevant parts of the whole
project. What is part and what is whole differs each kind of project
decision. But both the particular whole and parts involved should
identified and handled in the foregoing manner for all major project
decisions.

Of course this means employing a use case leading, model drive
architecture approach as with UP and MDA at OMG. [See www.omg.com for
details.]

High level system design should explicitly be based upon or embed an
object model of real actual domain entities and processes that a play
and role insofar as they are relevant to project use cases as whole -
project scope. There are a number of reasons this help create the most
optimal OO designs, and I will detail in soon to follow posts over the
next 2-3 days.

Finally for completion the project should apply relevant contextually
objective facts and a scientific: hypothesis, experiment, theory back to
practice and so on approach.

These are significant kind of rational holistic practices and viewpoints
that a truly "scientifico-engineering" approach to software development
takes.

That is as opposed to the:
        ` piecemeal
        ` frequent stovepipe design cul-de-sac waste of resources turnaround
        ` part above whole designs and decisions
        ` coder-centric
nature of XP project development.

Again, for those whom haven't *actually* read up on the essentials of UP
and MDA to best contribute to improving OO and software engineering,
which should be the intent, the goal of discussion on these matters. It
is at least as far as I am concerned. That of certainly means striving
to be and remain intellectually honest as well.

Elliott 

-- 
Global Plans + Iterative/Incremental Deployment (IID)
         Theory Leads, Practice Verifies
           Profiteer US Out of Iraq Now!

Relevant Pages

  • Re: XP Requirement Analysis?
    ... what do you find circular. ... I differ from Webster's in stressing that reason, theory, reasoning ... while practice should verify. ... Amenable plans should largely be constructed based upon: ...
    (comp.object)
  • Re: Federer interview
    ... >> match, it's like a practice, so for this reason I'm not too concerned ... >> move away too much from my game plan because I don't want to mess myself ... >> was trying a little bit more than today and tomorrow I will try to play ...
    (rec.sport.tennis)
  • Re: Federer interview
    ... > match, it's like a practice, so for this reason I'm not too concerned ... > move away too much from my game plan because I don't want to mess myself ... > was trying a little bit more than today and tomorrow I will try to play ...
    (rec.sport.tennis)
  • Re: NFL injury notes
    ... "Who wants to play Garrard?" ... barring a setback is expected to start this weekend. ... and that the rest of the team found out during practice Wednesday. ... HC Dick Jauron did say that expecting Denney back around ...
    (rec.gambling.sports)
  • Re: NFL injury notes
    ... "Who wants to play Garrard?" ... barring a setback is expected to start this weekend. ... and that the rest of the team found out during practice Wednesday. ... Browns HC Romeo Crennel said he's expecting Zastudil to ...
    (rec.gambling.sports)