Engineering Practices

From Guidance Share

Better software through proven practices. Improve the ability for practitioners to build quality software solutions faster and easier. Build a community around engineering practices to help foster emerging software engineering practices, as well as make good software engineer practices more accessable to everyday practice.

Engineering Practices Frame

{- | Knowledge Area | Practices | Activities | Artifacts |- | Planning | Planning Practices | Planning Activities | Planning Artifacts |- | Requirements and Analysis | Requirements Practices | Requirements Activities | Requirements Artifacts |- | Architecture and Design | Arch And Design Practices | Arch And Design Activities | Arch And Design Artifacts |- | Development | Development Practices | Development Activities | Development Artifacts |- | Testing | Testing Practices | Testing Activities | Testing Artifacts | |- | Deployment | Deployment Practices | Deployment Activities | Deployment Artifacts |- | Maintenance | Maintenance Practices | Maintenance Activities | Maintenance Artifacts |- | Security Engineering | Security Engineering Practices | Security Engineering Activities | Security Engineering Artifacts |- | Performance | Performance Practices | Performance Activities | Performance Artifacts |- | Flexibility | Flexibility Practices | Flexibility Activities | Flexibility Artifacts -}

Objectives

• Provide customer guidance for software engineering practices and techniques
• Refine and enhance successful software practices
• Reduce mistakes and improve software quality
• Bake quality attributes (security, performance, … etc.) into the life cycle
• Build a community around best software development practices
• Increase precision around context

Deliverables

Modular, task based guidance for life cycle activities and artifacts.

* Information Model * Practices * How Tos * Templates * Samples * Walkthroughs * Checklists * Patterns * Community * Tools integration * Product Feedback

Approach

• Organize best practices using knowledge areas.
• Build a library of “pluggable”, modular software engineering techniques
• Identify practices that improve software quality and engineering efficiency
• Identify and reduce pitfalls within software engineering activities
• Prioritize software engineering activities based on results in practice

Key Terms

• Knowledge Areas. Organizing scheme that brings together common practices, activities, techniques.
• How Tos. Step-by-step, task-based guidance.
• Templates. Standardized template to help execute the activity/steps. Cross-discipline communication tool.
• Samples. Best practice samples of what good looks like.
• Walkthroughs. Narrative hand-holding through the activity
• Checklists.
• Activity Patterns.
• Artifact Patterns.

Key Concepts

• Build a knowledge base of software engineering techniques
  • Focus on practices not process
  • Favor the practitioner and results over theory
  • Leverage industry subject matter experts
• Organize guidance using Knowledge Areas
  • Key software engineering activities (development, testing … etc.)
  • Quality attributes (performance, security, flexibility … etc.)
• Turn quality attributes into actionable activities and techniques
  • Break quality attributes down into actionable categories
  • Identify and refine techniques that improve the success
• Build a library of “pluggable”, modular practices
  • Favor modular content types over monolithic
• Incremental Adoption of Practices and Techniques
  • Can use them together, but adopt incrementally (“Better Together”)
  • Frame to set the context
• Increase precision around context
  • Archetypes (Web, Desktop, Web Service … etc.)
  • Scenarios (Intranet, Internet … etc.)
• Tools integration
  • Pluggable in MSF/VS .NET/Team Tools/MSF
  • Richest experience with MSF
• Create a site for sharing best software engineering practices
  • Practitioner-to-Practitioner assistance
  • Community submissions