Hello
everyone:
After
last week's call, I was thinking more about what I believe is necessary to
include in the next release of OpenUP. In my opinion a methodology does
not survive and prosper based on its own merits, it survives because there is a
community. IMHO, XP and Scrum have taken off because they are easy to get
started with (although the ease of getting started does not necessarily imply
ease of use), they have charismatic champions telling their audience what the
audience wants to hear. There is a wide range of supporting material including
books and courses to help people get started with these methods. If OpenUP is to
survive and find its place in the hearts and minds of developers then we need
to focus on capturing people's imaginations. In this era of 10 second sound
bites we need to do that quickly. I would like to propose the following
activities for general and overarching issues:
1) We need an OpenUP
course – or more to the point, course material we can spin into a half
day tutorial or re-spin into a two day "hands on" workshop. Something
that not only introduced OpenUP but iterative development. A possible course
title is "Iterative Development with OpenUP".
2) I think we need a
version of OpenUP that is less intimidating than the version we have at the
moment. OpenUP is suppose to be for small teams yet it has the appearance of a
voluminous and complex process. What if we created some kind of
"abridged" version that reduced the cognitive load on the early
adopters? This version would not be maintained as part of the composer.
Rather, it would be more like a cheat sheet that simply captured the essence,
phase, iterations, work item list, focus on architecture, risk
management. A version that if a person took a half day OpenUP tutorial
they had at least a chance of making a positive change using OpenUP.
3) I also believe we
need to strongly encourage and support translation efforts. I know there was
some interest in creating a Russian translation of OpenUP, but I do not
know what has happened since.
4) A book? I was
intrigued by the suggestion of creating a "red book". I don't know if
I can physically sequester myself with a writing team, but I am willing to
wager that we have enough material between us to create a simple book. Perhaps
"Post Agile Development with OpenUP"
These are
just some thoughts I had for tomorrow's call. Look forward to chatting with you
all…
Steve