Candidate For Xp

I'm currently in the process of planning RapidPrototyping Sessions with our customer to design the HumanComputerInteraction for our application. These are going to take the form of 2 day sessions over a 10 week block.

Each session covers several business requirements that have an HCI aspect. A week prior to each session we intend on delivering a set of Use Cases or User Stories associated with the session, these will form part of the customers approval document on the day.

The sessions will begin with ourselves presenting the preliminary screens developed using VB. If needed, these screens will be altered during the session until agreement is reached with the customer or noting any changes required that can be done leading upto the following weeks session, in which the altered screens will be presented for approval.

Therefore, the cycle of development is;

1. Develop Prototype Screens

2. Present Prototype/Altered Screens to Customer for Approval

3. Make Alterations to Prototype screens as needed

4. Repeat steps 1-3.

All of this is conducted on a week-by-week basis.

Does this sound like a candidate for XP?

Well, if you began with the ModelFirst, and did all the screen designs on cards instead of in VB, it would seem more like XP to me. Having a bunch of screen definitions at the beginning isn't much like any XP project I'm aware of.

But it's not entirely incompatible, I wouldn't suppose. Tell us more about it? --RonJeffries

The model is currently being finalised, and obviously we'll be needing this for several of the screens. We're developing the prototype screens by identifying HCI aspects directly from the business requirements, writing Use Cases for the user transactions, identifying the HCI features from the use cases and then developing them in VB ready for the customer sessions.

There isn't going to be much in the way of presentation logic, it's more just the screen layouts and formatting presented at the sessions. The sequencing will be presented in the Use Case scenario's to which the customer will agree or disagree during the session. Once agreed upon, we will then go back and code the presentation logic from the agreed Use Cases. The final session will be used for checking the presentation logic with the customer. Obviously if we come across any presentation flaws during the process we will raise these with the customer.

The Use Cases are using a format not dissimilar to Alistair's - although the TDA feels this is too formal and SW Engineering oriented, so they'll probably change to resemble something more like user stories.

I'm not a big prototyping fan, I would rather user paper, but then again this wasn't my decision to make. --StuartBarker