Drawing distinctions between the "extreme programming" of Kent Beck and others, Tom Love spoke about the software development process he calls "Extreme Software Engineering™".  It’s a proven model that his company uses to predict, manage, measure and deliver Java-based development projects. Citing nine-out-of-nine projects coming in on time, on spec, and within budget, Tom found an eager COOUG audience for the factors in this success.

In some areas he agrees with Kent Beck, especially in the area of developing test cases along with the code, and continuously testing while code is integrated. However Tom disagreed when it came to continuous refactoring and the use of pair-programming. Instead, Tom placed the emphasis on the definition of a "project" that could be accomplished in no more than 100 days. Larger efforts would require multiple projects, with refactoring between them. Tight management of a very light process was combined with client sign-off of a "one page spec" and the commitment to make decisions in 24 hours.

For programming productivity, Tom recommended multiple monitors per workstation. He cited this as a low cost boost to individual coding, while easily allowing others to roll over and help. Some other teamwork factors were "standup" all-hands meetings, a 3-D class hierarchy model, paid lunches, and attention to physical proximity between developers.

In the end, Tom reminded us, we are building distributed transaction processing systems with hundreds or thousands of users. Such systems require serious up-front engineering work and cannot simply be refactored into existence.

Tom supplied Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Jolt Cola for this meeting!

Stay tuned - many of the audience asked for a copy of the slides.  Tom may make them available on our web site.  If so, we'll post them here.

Tom Love, Ph.D. is the Co-Founder and CEO of ShouldersCorp. Prior to founding ShouldersCorp, he was CEO of WorldStreet Corporation, Managing Director of Morgan Stanley and Vice President of IBM Consulting Group (now Global Services). In 1983 he co-founded Stepstone Corporation, the first Object Oriented software products company (Objective-C; Software-ICs). Earlier in his career, he held director-level technical positions with Schlumberger, ITT and GE. Tom has contributed significantly to the commercial evolution of the software industry. He is the author or co-author of over 60 journal articles, book chapter and technical reports, as well as the author of “Object Lessons: Lessons Learned from Commercial Object-Oriented Application Development”, published by Cambridge University Press. Tom Love has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the University of Washington where he studied the characteristics of successful computer programmers. He received his BS in psychology and mathematics from the University of Alabama.

      --------------------------- We gave away these Door Prizes----------------------

                                 
       5 Copies                                                1 Copy                   1 Copy
Courtesy Tom Love                           Courtesy Kimberly Silvestro, Addison Wesley