Matt Stephens – författare

This book describes how to apply ICONIX Process (a minimal, use case-driven modeling process) in an agile software project. It''s full of practical advice for avoiding common agile pitfalls. Further, the book defines a core agile subset so those of you who want to get agile need not spend years learning to do it. Instead, you can simply read this book and apply the core subset of techniques.

The book follows a real-life .NET/C# project from inception and UML modeling, to working code through several iterations. You can then go on-line to compare the finished product with the initial set of use cases.

The book also introduces several extensions to the core ICONIX Process, including combining test-driven development (TDD) with up-front design to maximize both approaches (with examples using Java and JUnit). And the book incorporates persona analysis to drive the projects goals and reduce requirements churn.

Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Theory and Practice shows how to drive an object-oriented software design from use case all the way through coding and testing, based on the minimalist, UML-based ICONIX process. In addition to a comprehensive explanation of the foundations of the approach, the book makes extensive use of examples and provides exercises at the back of each chapter.

This book leads by example. It demonstrates common analysis and design errors, shows how to detect and fix them, and suggests how to avoid making the same errors in the future. The book also encourages you to examine its UML examples and to search for specific errors. You''ll get clues, then later receive the answers during review sessions toward the end of the book.

Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP (featuring Songs of the Extremos) takes a satirical look at the increasingly-hyped extreme programming (XP) methodology. It explores some quite astonishing Extremo quotes that have typified the XP approach quotes such as, “XPers are not afraid of oral documentation,” “Schedule is the customer''s problem,” “Dependencies between requirements are more a matter of fear than reality” and “Concentration is the enemy.”

In between the chuckles, though, there is a serious analysis of XP''s many flaws. The authors also examine C3, the first XP project, whose team (most of whom went on to get XP book deals shortly before C3''s cancellation) described themselves as "the best team on the face of the Earth." (In a later chapter, the authors also note that one problem which can affect pair programmers is overconfidence—or is that "eXcessive courage"?). The authors examine whether the problems that led to C3''s “inexplicable” cancellation could also afflict present-day XP projects.

In the final chapter, Refactoring XP, Matt and Doug suggest some ways of achieving the agile goals of XP using some XP practices (used in moderation) combined with other, less risk-laden methods.

The groundbreaking book Design Driven Testing brings sanity back to the software development process by flipping around the concept of Test Driven Development (TDD)—restoring the concept of using testing to verify a design instead of pretending that unit tests are a replacement for design. Anyone who feels that TDD is “Too Damn Difficult” will appreciate this book.

Design Driven Testing shows that, by combining a forward-thinking development process with cutting-edge automation, testing can be a finely targeted, business-driven, rewarding effort. In other words, you’ll learn how to test smarter, not harder.

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX merges the faultless visual layout tools of Dreamweaver and the powerful yet easy-to-use database integration offered by UltraDev into a product that is simply the most vital piece of software any web designer can own.

Unlike many other books, Foundation Dreamweaver MX concentrates on both sides of this alliance, looking to the future. No matter what your background, this book will give you a solid foundation in graphic design and layout issues as well as a full grounding in the powerful database integration features that Dreamweaver MX offers.

The truth is that database integration is no more of an extra in today''s climate than faultless visual design, and this book is here to guide you through this new world, covering dynamic scripting with PHP and the popular MySQL database.

This book is suitable for both PC and Mac (OS X needed) platforms.

Whether a complete novice or a past user, after reading this book, youll be fluent in the full breadth of Dreamweaver MX''s powerful functionality, a unique learning curve backed up by solid real-world case studies and tutorials.

Dreamweaver MX makes this all possible, and Foundation Dreamweaver MX makes it easier than you could have imagined.

December 2002: Macromedia has released an update, available for download, which addresses a number of issues in Dreamweaver MX, including compatibity with Macromedia Contribute.

From the beginning of software time, people have wondered why it isn’t possible to accelerate software projects by simply adding staff. This is sometimes known as the “nine women can’t make a baby in one month” problem. The most famous treatise declaring this to be impossible is Fred Brooks’ 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month, in which he declares that “adding more programmers to a late software project makes it later,” and indeed this has proven largely true over the decades.

Aided by a domain-driven code generator that quickly creates database and API code, Parallel Agile (PA) achieves significant schedule compression using parallelism: as many developers as necessary can independently and concurrently develop the scenarios from initial prototype through production code. Projects can scale by elastic staffing, rather than by stretching schedules for larger development efforts. Schedule compression with a large team of developersworking in parallel is analogous to hardware acceleration of compute problems using parallel CPUs.

PA has some similarities with and differences from other Agile approaches. Like most Agile methods, PA "gets to code early" and uses feedback from executable software to drive requirements and design. PA uses technical prototyping as a risk-mitigation strategy, to help sanity-check requirements for feasibility, and to evaluate different technical architectures and technologies.

Unlike many Agile methods, PA does not support "design by refactoring," and it doesn''t drive designs from unit tests. Instead, PA uses a minimalist UML-based design approach (Agile/ICONIX) that starts out with a domain model to facilitate communication across the development team, and partitions the system along use case boundaries, which enables parallel development. Parallel Agile is fully compatible with the Incremental Commitment Spiral Model (ICSM), which involves concurrent effort of a systems engineering team, a development team, and a test team working alongside the developers. 

The authors have been researching and refining the PA process for several years on multiple test projects that have involved over 200 developers. The book’s example project details the design of one of these test projects, a crowdsourced traffic safety system.