Matt talks about his and Doug Rosenberg's new book Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML:

 
After participating in some of Doug’s ICONIX training courses, it quickly became apparent that the value people get from these courses is their interactive, step-by-step nature.

For example, at first people sometimes don’t “get” robustness analysis (the cornerstone of the ICONIX Process). When faced with the task of drawing a robustness diagram, even if they’ve read up on the theory, they’ll stare at the blank screen, just not sure how to get started.

But when they’re walked through the practice of drawing these diagrams a few times, step-by-step, the light bulb slams on and suddenly, of course, they can do it for themselves.

So in this book we’ve tried to capture the essential qualities of Doug’s courses. We walk through example diagrams each starting with a blank screen, showing the steps – and, essentially, the thought process – involved in creating the various types of diagrams.

The training courses are also interactive – the attendees are busy drawing diagrams and getting feedback, and so learning from their mistakes [1].

So for the review milestones (each step in the process finishes with a review), we’ve had some fun and created fictional dialogs between a reviewer and a developer, to demonstrate the sort of issues that should be addressed at each review milestone. The feedback provided by the reviewer shows the most common (and the most dangerous) mistakes that developers tend to make.

[1] This is by far the best way to learn, as it’s programmed into our brains. From the day we’re born, we learn by discovering how not to do things, and then trying over and over until we get it right. Experts eventually “perfect” their art because they no longer make mistakes – at least none that they’ll admit to!

Also by Matt Stephens and Doug Rosenberg:

Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP
- available to buy on-line: amazon.com  amazon.co.uk

Agile Development with ICONIX Process
- available to buy on-line: amazon.com  amazon.co.uk

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