QCon day 4 – Kent Beck on Effective Design


Another excellent talk in which Kent provided his latest views on how he thinks problems should be solved from the design point of view. He started by following on from his keynote, pushing that we must design with people in mind; design for the skills of your availoble developers. The talk built up to five principles that Kent felt should be followed when a problem or new piece of functionality is required:

  • Leap (you have confidence, just do it)
  • Parallel ( you lack a little confidence do it in parallel)
  • Migrate (your comfortable with your solution that is in parallel, migrate to it)
  • Simplify (eliminate constrainsts to make the problem easier)
  • Place a stepping stone (tackle it a piece at a time by breaking it into easier steps)

Walking through the list showed a clearly thought out path and one which i belive is useful in the approach.. The aim is to try to move your functionalty towards Leap, i look forward to more on these ideas.


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