Best Practices Under the Lamplight

Barry Boehm once criticized the focus of much of the thinking in software field relating it to the old joke about a drunk who is seen crawling around under a street lamplight. In the joke, a Police Officer comes up to the drunk and asked him what he thought he was doing. The drunk replied that he lost his car keys outside the nearby pub. When the officer then asks him why he’s looking for the keys at this spot, which was down the street from the pub, the drunk replies: "Because the light is better over here."

Louis Taborda will present the challenges that face current best practices and stimulate discussion on the conditions under which these practices are effective or appropriate. Is it a case that we continue to use practices that are conveniently “under the lamplight” rather than look for new approaches to the real-world problems we face?

Louis will outline a framework he has been developing that positions plan-driven and agile methods using the dimensions of change and architectural complexity in systems development. This perspective indicates that common conditions experienced by many practitioners are not satisfied by either approach and the resulting gap requires a generalization of the two-party customer-supplier paradigm. A simple model for the management of evolving architectures is proposed in these circumstances and put forward for discussion by the audience.

This paper is being presented at a conference later in the year. It is anticipated that a copy of the notes will be available after the conference.