12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Brussels, Belgium, July 20 - 24, 1998
	Tutorial T6

Designing A Light Methodology

The methodology of an organization is a social construction that includes the roles, skills, teaming, activities, techniques, deliverables, standards, habits and culture of the organization as it develops software. The first part of the tutorial introduces language and constructs needed to evaluate, compare and construct methodologies. These include precision, accuracy, tolerance, relevance, and scale, along with the nine basic elements of a methodology. Several examples of effective, lightweight and real methodologies are given, along with commentary on the social setting for each. The tutorial examines the conditions suited to shifting from a lighter to a heavier methodology and the penalty for doing so. The tutorial ends with the presentation of a small family of lightweight and practical methodologies, optimized for productivity, making maximum use of human, face-to-face communication. Considerations about success and failure in affecting culture are visited again at the end.

Alistair Cockburn, visiting professor at the Univerity of Oslo and special advisor to the Central Bank of Norway for object technology and software project management, was the OO methodology designer for the IBM Consulting Group before founding Humans and Technology in 1994. His book Surviving Your OO Project was published in 1998.