ChangefIT using AGILE

[FaStOnE]

Hey Kit -

Have you had any feedback or instances of your ChangefIT being utilized in an AGILE environment as opposed to SDLC? Were there any issues or concerns? Help? Improvements of one over the other?

Just curious ...

[kitvb1]

Re: ChangefIT using AGILE

Hey Rick

There would be no difference whichever Project Management Methodology one used. You would still go through the same change management processes regardless. An object still has to be checked-out, promoted to test, optionally to QA, and then to live (production).

uummm... I'm also not a very good salesman. People order my software and that's it. I leave them to it, I don't try to sell them anything afterwards. My first license was issued in September last year and in the last 12 months I've issued about 50 licenses. How many are actually using it, I can only judge from the number of questions I get from different users. I know a few aren't (they haven't downloaded the software key) and a few use it only for XrefIT (for which no key need be ordered).

p.s. Now that you've drawn attention to this forum (and maybe you'd noticed the name change) I'll have to announce that DeskfIT v1.1 will be released this month. It is going into a live customer site for 3 weeks full system testing on next Monday.

[BenThurley]

Re: ChangefIT using AGILE

I like agile but a lot of people end practising "cowboy coding", thinking that it as agile. That's true of any platform and language. I think agile on the AS400 could work but you would probably have to make up your own methodology or slightly alter an existing one. So much of agile is based on the language tools and I'm afraid that RPG and the AS400 is really lacking in these areas.

Key concepts such as test driven development require an automated unit testing framework. I did see one for RPG but it was very clumsy compared to jUnit. Constant re-factoring of code is encouraged if you use eclipse because there are numerous handy functions to automate a lot of it. In SEU or even WSDC (or RDi) you have to type every last character which is more prone to mistakes and so people often try to change the bare minimum. You can integrate your automated unit tests right into the source control using continuous integration but this works with subversion which is a pain in the butt to use with RPG. Another concept is re-factoring to design patterns which in theory you should be able to do but in practice the re-factoring tools aren't there and I have never seen a book on design patterns written for RPG. In fact I have never seen a book written on good software design written for RPG...

Taking all of those away you could still practice iterative incremental deliveries and some of the non-coding bits like pair programming, stand-up meetings, meetings at peoples desks so others overhear etc. It can still be agile but maybe not specifically XP. SCRUM might be a good one to look at as it mainly focusses on changing the project management.