Dr. Charles Suscheck, ICONIX
Doug Rosenberg, ICONIX
www.iconixsw.com
www.iconixprocess.com
Introduction
Java developers using the Eclipse environment can have a "pre-fabricated
development process" delivered to them using the Eclipse
Process Framework (EPF). Until recently, process options available
in this format were mostly limited to a Unified/RUP option,
and an eXtreme Programming (XP) option. Historically, each
of these options has presented some challenges; full blown
RUP is large and complex, requires tailoring, and can be difficult
to learn, while XP offers little in the areas of analysis,
design, and requirements management, focusing mostly on the
coding and testing phases of development.
With the release of Agile/ICONIX-EPF, developers now have
an additional option, which offers the benefits of a minimalist,
agile approach to development while retaining the benefits
of a rigorous, robust, design-centric process.
Agile/ICONIX-EPF builds on the widely used "use case
driven" ICONIX Process, and takes full advantage of the
latest “agile extensions” to the process, including automated
tool support for automatic generation of unit test stubs from
design diagrams, and for keeping UML models and Java code in-synch
over the lifetime of an Eclipse project.
What is EPF?
The Eclipse Process Framework (EPF), attempts to address the
problems that process engineers face every day:
- Huge, unmanageable processes that must be understood and
then scaled down
- Document-heavy non-graphical process descriptions
- Inconsistent or poorly designed process documentation
- Heavyweight, one size fits all methodologies
- Sequential descriptions of non-sequential processes
- Non-centralized process documentation that people access
or find
- Shelfware that is never used
EPF is an open source initiative to provide the community
with a common root process and the tools to customize the root
processes, manage, build, and deploy your own process in a
consistent way. Not only is EPF providing the basic process
and tools, it's an open source eclipse project and as such,
encourages people to contribute their own customization of
processes (or so-called best practices).
Process development can now moves from a proprietary tightly
controlled activity to a community activity that fosters sharing
of best practices using a common communication framework to
describe them.
The EPF (see www.eclipse.org/epf )
has two goals:
To provide an extensible framework and exemplary tools for
software process engineering - method and process authoring,
library management, configuring and publishing a process.
To provide exemplary and extensible process content for a
range of software development and management processes supporting
iterative, agile, and incremental development, and applicable
to a broad set of development platforms and applications.
- - Reference http://www.eclipse.org/epf/ June
16, 2006 .
These goals translate into a tool for customizing or creating
processes and then deploying them in a standardized web-based
medium (a la RUP webpages). The tool, called EPF Composer,
makes it easy to create policies, processes, guidelines, tool
support, and more in a format consistent across the software
industry. The EPF also contains simplified basic process derived
from RUP call OpenUP, another version based on SCRUM is also
planned for the first release.
Why is the EPF Composer important? In a word: standardization. “A
good process diagram can replace 20 – 25 pages of text” – Olson “defining
short and usable processes” Crosstalk June 2006
The EPF and composer allow the software industry to capture
best practices in a consistent way, using a tool which, when
EPF is fully fleshed out, will integrate with commercial tools
via open interfaces.
EPF is using a standard metamodel based on OMG SPEM to describe
best practices, which is a huge leap forward. Now RUP, Iconix,
FDD, XP, Scrum, and other processes can be expressed using
the same framework.
As a leader in software process training and consulting, ICONIX
(led by the efforts of Dr. Suscheck) has undertaken the task
of expressing our streamlined, minimalist but rigorous process
through the EPF. The results of this work are described in
the remainder of this paper.
EPF and ICONIX
ICONIX Process, a minimalist yet rigorous
approach that uses a UML core subset and reliably avoids analysis
paralysis, has been in widespread use in industry for more
than a decade, and is defined in several books, most recently Use
Case Driven Object Modeling with UML – Theory and Practice (Apress
2007), by Doug Rosenberg and Matt Stephens. In the Theory/Practice
book, we define the process in a set of activity diagrams,
and provide additional guidance on topics such as use case
modeling, domain modeling, and sequence diagramming in the
form of Top-10 “to-do” lists. The EPF contains a roadmap of
the ICONIX process with drill-down activities and Top-10 “to-do” lists.
In our previous work, Agile
Development with ICONIX Process (Apress 2006),
we proposed some extensions to the original version of
ICONIX Process to better align it with agile development
principles (e.g. getting to code quickly, small-increment,
short-iteration development, and being more feedback-driven
rather than purely plan-driven). These extensions have
gained some automated support from tool vendors like Sparx
Systems, (including some automated support for generation
of unit test stubs, and particularly with the advent of
the “ MDG
Integration for Eclipse ” product, which
provides outstanding facilities for keeping UML models
and Java code in-synch over the lifespan of a project).
These agile extensions are fully reflected in the ICONIX
Process Roadmap, and further extensions in the testing
arena are currently being contemplated.
How to use Agile/ICONIX-EPF
The Agile/ICONIX-EPF implementation is located on the ICONIX
website as a zip file, and can be downloaded from http://www.iconixsw.com/ICONIX_EPF.zip .
Once you download the file, simply unzip the package and you
will have a series of web pages that you can browse.
An individual or organization may incorporate all or part of the ICONIX process in their process /methodology for their internal use if they clearly delineate in all their textual and diagrammatic representations of their process /methodology exactly which portions of it are incorporated from the ICONIX process and identify ICONIX by spelling our company name with all upper case letters as we do "ICONIX" and by giving a link to our web site http://www.iconixsw.com This no-charge permission for internal use specifically includes all or part of the available diagrammatic descriptions of the ICONIX process, including the ICONIX Process Road Map.
An individual or organization may NOT without separate and specific written permission from ICONIX incorporate all or any part (s) of the ICONIX process in any process /methodology they develop for the use of other individual(s) or organization(s) and may NOT without separate and specific written permission from ICONIX incorporate all or any part(s) of the ICONIX process in any product(s) or work product(s) that they deliver, sell or give to anyone outside their organization in textual and/or in diagrammatic form.
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Your directory
structure should look something like Figure 1 , and will include
an index.htm file.
Figure 1
Directory structure of Agile/ICONIX - EPF
Double clicking on the index.htm file will bring up your browser
and point you to the ICONIX Process Roadmap ( Figure 2 ). For
the purpose of this example we will use internet explorer.
Figure 2 Intial Agile/ICONIX -
EPF view
The “Roadmap for the Iconix Process” will expand to show a
picture of the roadmap. The “Initial Overview” folder in the
left hand corner will open to the roadmap also. The “Top 10
Lists” will open to a browser that allows you to jump to a
specific top 10 item. See Figure 3 .
Figure 3 Top 10 Lists in Browser
Tree
Start with clicking the “roadmap for the Iconix Process”.
The body of the browser will show the roadmap. You'll have
to scroll around to see of the of roadmap but the following
figure gives you an idea of what you'll view. The diagram consists
of top level activities: “Requirements Analysis” “Analysis
and Preliminary Design” “Detailed Design” “Implementation”
Figure 4 Top Level ICONIX Process Activity Diagram lets you
drill deeper into the process
Opening the top level activity diagram gives you the option
to “drill-down” by lifecycle phase, or to view the Top 10 lists.
For example, double-clicking on the “Requirements Analysis” lifecycle
phase opens this detailed activity diagram ( Figure 5 ), which
details an easy-to-follow sequence of steps for defining a
domain model, a use case model, and for allocating functional
requirements to your use cases.
Figure 5 Requirements Analysis
Activity Diagram
Similarly, clicking on “Detailed Design” results in a detailed
activity diagram ( Figure 6 ) for driving an object-oriented
design from your use cases using sequence diagrams. This includes
automatic generation of skeleton sequence diagrams (and test
cases) using the “Agile/ICONIX Add-In” which can be found on
the “ Enterprise
Architect for Power Users ” multimedia tutorial.
Figure 6 Activity Diagram for
Detailed Design
In addition to the detailed activity diagrams, you can also
drill-down to view Top-10 guidance on any modeling activity.
For example, Figure 7 shows the Top 10 Domain Modeling guidelines.
Figure 7 Top 10 list for Domain
Modeling
The EPF contains 11 top 10 checklists, 4 top level activities,
and detailed activity diagrams for each of the top level activities.
Additionally the EPF contains a variety of ways to view the
information, search capabilities, the ability to print the
information, and an index. See Figure 8 and Figure 9 .
Figure 8 EPF Utilities
Figure 9 EPF built in view capabilities
Conclusion
If you're looking for a minimalist, lightweight, agile
UML process , we hope you'll find that the availability
of the ICONIX Process Roadmap in EPF will help everyone on
your team to stay on the same page with your development
effort.
For more info, email us at umltraining@iconixsw.com or
publicclasses@iconixsw.com |
