InfoQ

Presentation

Recorded at:
Recorded at

Modifiability: Or is there Design in Agility?

Presented by Martin Fowler on Oct 15, 2007 01:09 AM

Community
Architecture,
Agile
Topics
Design ,
Methodologies
Tags
QCon ,
Refactoring
The next QCon is in San Francisco Nov 18-20, Join us!
Summary
Many people assume that agile methods mean an absence of design. Design still happens in agile projects, but it shifts from an up-front phase to a continual evolution. Design decisions should be left to the last responsible moment, but some design decisions do need to be made at the start of a project. Martin Fowler explores this topic through a panel discussion of design in an agile context.

Bio
Martin Fowler is a pioneer of object-oriented technology, refactoring, patterns, agile methodologies, domain modeling, UML, and Extreme Programming - having written 5 books on some of these subjects. Martin's focus is in designing enterprise software - looking at what makes a good design and what practices are needed to come up with good design.

About the conference
QCon is a conference that is organized by the community, for the community.The result is a high quality conference experience where a tremendous amount of attention and investment has gone into having the best content on the most important topics presented by the leaders in our community.QCon is designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers.

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

13 comments

Watch Thread Reply

A great Panel, I really enjoyed it! by Sadek Drobi Posted Oct 15, 2007 4:32 AM
Downloading videos&pres.? by Gurkan Nisanci Posted Oct 16, 2007 9:00 AM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Ole Friis Posted Oct 16, 2007 1:31 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Floyd Marinescu Posted Oct 17, 2007 2:50 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Jim Standley Posted Oct 18, 2007 1:41 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Antony Stubbs Posted Nov 8, 2007 12:44 AM
Video doesn't even start... by Fred Janon Posted Mar 7, 2008 8:24 AM
Re: Video doesn't even start... by Justin Forder Posted Mar 15, 2008 12:43 PM
Re: Video doesn't even start... by Justin Forder Posted Mar 15, 2008 1:01 PM
semantics by joshua milane Posted Apr 15, 2009 8:34 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Floyd Marinescu Posted Oct 18, 2007 10:15 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Luc Prefontaine Posted Oct 21, 2007 3:34 PM
Re: Downloading videos&pres.? by Harald Walker Posted Oct 16, 2007 4:13 PM
  1. Back to top

    A great Panel, I really enjoyed it!

    Oct 15, 2007 4:32 AM by Sadek Drobi

    I really enjoyed this Panel @ QCon london, I ve been waiting for this video for almost half a year now! Also another video i am expecting soon is the "The Yawning Crevasse of Doom" keynote with Fowler and North.

  2. Back to top

    Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 16, 2007 9:00 AM by Gurkan Nisanci

    To watch them offline, is there a way to download the videos and presentations?

  3. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 16, 2007 1:31 PM by Ole Friis

    Yeah, would be really nice. I always get problems watching videos on InfoQ, for some reason - the video "gets stuck" after 10 to 15 minutes of playing, and the only fix is to stop it, start from the beginning and drag the playback icon to the place it got stuck. Well, today this fix just doesn't work. Perhaps because I'm using Safari on a Mac? Anyway, this is too frustrating, so I give up... which is a shame, because the panel discussion seems really interesting, and I've enjoyed the 25 minutes I succeeded watching.

  4. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 16, 2007 4:13 PM by Harald Walker

    Am missing that as well. Would like to share it with my team on a big screen.

  5. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 17, 2007 2:50 PM by Floyd Marinescu

    Sorry guys, we are working on a new system that will make some of these problems go away, but it may not be up for another month or two. In the meantime there is now way to download these or go full screen. MP3 versions should be added later on as well.

  6. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 18, 2007 1:41 PM by Jim Standley

    Yikes, this one ends in mid sentence? Bummer.

  7. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 18, 2007 10:15 PM by Floyd Marinescu

    Sorry I meant that there is "no" way to download these or go full screen.

  8. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Oct 21, 2007 3:34 PM by Luc Prefontaine

    I have been creating custom software for 25 years and I now feel less lonely on Earth. Since I started to write software, I used to postpone decisions until time was up to address them, I used to design evolution capabilities in my design, I used to understand the business model and simulate processes to insure my software could bend to potentially new uses not in the immediate scope of the project at hand,... And I never has to use a book about design patterns to find the appropriate one... I never understood "architects" these days to spit out tons of papers describing the system down to the tiniest bolt before spitting out the first line of code. We have much more powerful tools now to refactor software than just a text editor, a compiler and a linker... To me it looks like bullshit to postpone the implementation as much as possible. It's code that makes a system run business processes, not the paper around it. I saw many "so called architects" adopt a rigid design from the start to end up failing at user acceptance tests, busting budgets, missing time to market deadlines, or ending up with a solution that is not flexible enough to adapt to new business needs. This happens too often to be anything else than a bad approach to creating software systems. These "so called architects" leave projects just before failure and propagate their bad practices elsewhere. It's about time that the industry rethinks it's approach to creating softwares. It looks to me that we went through a creativity drought for several years were software projects were assimilated to mechanicals processes that were to yield a working implementation. Experience in delivering projects from 0 to production is not recognized since the belief in these mechanical methods to deliver software is deeply anchored in the industry. Creativity and experience are essentials in a project. Since the parameters are never the same (time to market, budget, business domain, ...) there is no single recipe that can work for every project. Nonetheless that mirage of a bureaucratic process has been sought by the industry for years and I think it relegated creativity and experience to limbos. Hopefully, the wind will change sides...

  9. Back to top

    Re: Downloading videos&pres.?

    Nov 8, 2007 12:44 AM by Antony Stubbs

    Oh man! Just when he was about to talk about something i'm very interested in learning about - database schemas!! What's the story?? Can we get the rest of the presentation?

  10. Back to top

    Video doesn't even start...

    Mar 7, 2008 8:24 AM by Fred Janon

    The Flash presentation gets stuck at "Initializing".

  11. Back to top

    Re: Video doesn't even start...

    Mar 15, 2008 12:43 PM by Justin Forder

    For me it gets to a little after 46 minutes, then jumps to 0:00 (black screen with play button).

  12. Back to top

    Re: Video doesn't even start...

    Mar 15, 2008 1:01 PM by Justin Forder

    After reloading the page it gets to 58:21 - the full length of the video, but not quite the end of the session.

  13. Back to top

    semantics

    Apr 15, 2009 8:34 PM by joshua milane

    How is an insurance policy waste? I think semantics are getting people confused, or waste is not really waste, or people are choosing their words poorly. Josh

Educational Content

Bindings, Platforms, and Innovation

This presentation focuses on the Internet and separating myth from fact, history from the future, and the mundane from the imaginative. Bob Frankston presents a vision of what could and should be.

Orchestrating Long Running Activities with JBoss / JBPM

This article explores the use of JBoss and jBPM to implement design solutions that effectively address the issue of orchestrating long running activities.

Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases

This presentation covers the use of graph databases as an optimal solution for data that is difficult to fit in static tables, rapidly evolving data or data that has a lot of optional attributes.

Realistic about Risk: Software development with Real Options

This session introduces Real Options and shows how it can help in running your project. Real Options is a decision-making process that can be used to manage risk.

Communication Flexibility Using Bindings

This article discusses the use of bindings on services and references (including the instance of non-configured bindings) as the means to implement SCA communications in a Web and SOA environment.

Writing DSLs in Groovy

After a short introduction to DSLs, Scott Davis plays with the keyboard showing how to approach the creation of a DSL by typing working snippets of Groovy code that get executed.

Scaling Agile with C/ALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management)

IBM Rational and InfoQ present, Scaling Agile with C/ALM, an eBook showing organizations how to become “finely tuned software delivery machines” by enabling team integration and scaling.

Concurrent Programming with Microsoft F#

Amanda Laucher presents a real life enterprise application written in F#. She shows actual code snippets, explaining design decisions and suggesting how to use some of the F# constructs.