14-Mar-2006

ALF - Advanced Library for Flash

Carlos Rovira in carlosrovira.com posts a link to ALF - Advanced Library for Flash, a Flash IDE extension that extends Flash Library capabilities allowing you to find assets in a search as you type way and, when found, execute some actions on them which will help you refactor your library.

The promises of agile development have not been realised

Juan Palacio in Navegapolis reports on the speech by Steve McConell titled, 10 Most Important Ideas in Software Development, at the SD WEST2006 (Software Development Conference & Expo).

As a summary of his talk, these are some correct and incorrect ideas in software development:

Correct ideas:

• Software is developed by people, and their abilities are a critical factor.
• Incremental and iterative development is essential.
• The cost of fixing defects increases as the software is developed, irrespective of whether the software has been developed by Agile methods or not.
• Different types of software need to be developed in different ways.
• There now exists a Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, with disciplines of configuration management, maintenance and testing: SWEBOK.
• SWEBOK is not the last word, but it is a good start.
• The accuracy of estimations can be improved over time.

Wrong ideas:

• There are only two options for software development: continuous iteration and the sequential model.
• With Agile methods, the cost of fixing errors does not increase as the development progresses.
• Software development projects are problematical “per se”.
• Changes in requirements are inevitable.
• The requirements are not “obtained”; it is sufficient to receive them as manna from heaven.
• Enterprise projects should not be frightened of risk.
• A good development model can be applied to all projects.