#2782

Introducing DDD – Date Driven Development

I feel of all the *DD movements this one has the best chance of succeeding. Largely because unlike Test or Behavior Driven Development this requires people to only remember one letter, ‘D’. It’s also what a lot of people are doing already.

Obviously to compete effectively with TDD the DDD proponents are going to have to come up with something pretty catchy to compete with Red-Green-Refactor. I don’t see that as a problem. Many DDD practitioners are already using the tried and tested Plan-Procrastinate-Panic patterns on waterfall projects that savagely cut scope and ditch quality at the last minute to make a date. The date of course being set by those with pointy hair and only the slimmest grasp on what it takes to actually ship good software. In other words “bad” DDD.

I’ll stop before the joke wears any thinner.

Seriously though…

This started off as a joke based on a conversation I had at Scott Hanselman’s Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue Nerd Dinner. It turns out that “good” DDD is exactly what p&p does every time. We set a date and a prioritized list of product features and then keep executing on the backlog until pretty close to the date when we do any final wrap up and stabilization work and ship. Agile is “good” DDD.