Contemporary Development Principles and Practices

Module 1: Traditional Development Approaches

• 1.1 Overview of Sequential, Predictive Development Approaches
  • Description of sequential, predictive ‘Waterfall’ approaches
  • Timeline of evolution of Waterfall approaches
• 1.2 Strawman Waterfall
  • Dr Winston Royce’s Waterfall model
  • Benefits of Waterfall for controlling projects
  • Royce’s “Inherent risks”
• 1.3 V-Model
  • Early verification and validation
  • Benefits of V-model
• 1.4 Incremental Models
  • Example of Rational Unified Process
  • Incremental delivery
  • Breaking down scope and managing risk
• 1.5 When to Use Waterfall
  • Defined process control

• 2.1 What is Prince2?
  • Definition and origins
  • Prince2 Certifications: Foundation, Practitioner, Agile
  • Benefits of Prince2
• 2.2 Prince2 Methodology
  • Roles – Project manager, customer, user, supplier, project board
  • Management Techniques – Project assurance, project support
  • Scope - Interaction with contracts and contractual management
  • Controlling Change – Risk, quality, and change management
• 2.3 Prince2 Process Model
  • Directing a project
  • Starting up a project
  • Initiating a project
  • Managing stage boundaries
  • Controlling a stage
  • Managing product delivery
  • Closing a project
  • Planning

• 3.1 Historical Overview
  • Timeline of evolution of ‘Agile’ ideas 90s to present
  • Early Agile approaches – Scrum, XP, DSDM
  • Agile Developments – Kanban, BDD, DevOps, Scaling
• 3.2 The Agile Manifesto
  • Background to creating the Manifesto
  • Agile Manifesto overview
    • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
    • Working software over comprehensive documentation
    • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
    • Responding to change over following a plan

• 4.1 The 12 Agile Principles
  • Group discussion on each principle
• 4.2 Summary of Agile concepts
  • Iterative planning and development
  • Continuous improvement
  • Continuous learning
  • Collaboration and face-to-face communication
  • Collective accountability
  • Cross-functional teams

• 5.1 The Scrum Framework
  • Overview – Scrum Guide 2016
  • Scrum roles and responsibilities – Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team
  • Scrum events – Sprint, Sprint Planning, Review, Retrospective, Daily Scrum
  • Scrum artefacts – Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment
• 5.2 Agile Project Management Principles
  • Empirical Process Control
  • Iterative planning and reporting
  • Continuous Improvement and retrospection
  • Resource management and teams

• 6.1 Testing Fundamentals
  • The Fundamental Test Process
    • Planning, Analysis & Design, Execution, Evaluation, Closure
  • Test levels – unit, integration, system, user acceptance
  • Test approaches – requirements-based, risk-based, experience-based
  • Test design techniques – white-box, black-box techniques
• 6.2 Agile Testing
  • Agile Testing Quadrants overview – test strategy, planning
  • Test-driven development
  • Test automation principles – test automation pyramid
• 6.3 Test Types
  • Technology-facing tests that guide development
    • Unit testing, TDD, smoke tests
  • Business-facing tests that guide development
    • Story tests, examples, acceptance testing
  • Business-facing tests that critique the product
    • Exploratory testing, Alpa/Beta testing, UAT
  • Technology-facing tests that critique the product
    • Performance testing, usability, quality attributes

• 7.1 What is Business Analysis?
  • Business analysis and the business analyst
  • Levels of business analysis – enterprise, project, operational
  • Business Analysis principles
• 7.2 IIBA BA Book of Knowledge – Knowledge Areas
  • Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
  • Elicitation and Collaboration
  • Requirements Life Cycle Management
  • Strategy Analysis
  • Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
  • Solution Evaluation

• 8.1 Agile Business Analysis Considerations
  • Iterative development
  • Cross-functional teams
  • Collaboration between business and technology areas
• 8.2 Behaviour-Driven Development Overview
  • Origins in TDD and recent developments
  • Definitions – BDD, ATDD, Specification by Example
• 8.3 BDD Activities
  • Focus on features that deliver business value
  • Derive features collaboratively
  • Keep options open
  • Use concrete examples to illustrate features
  • Write executable specifications
  • Create living documentation
• 8.4 Agile BA Techniques & Tools
  • Business value definition
  • Personas
  • Impact Mapping
  • Real options
  • User Stories and acceptance criteria
  • Relative estimation
  • Given-When-Then template
  • Tool support for BDD