Is Design Dead

Is it? MartinFowler wants to know:

http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/designDead.html

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Thought XP has failed, on the way out, or is dead, so a rather moot point?

[Hardly. XP and other Agile methods have become mainstream and popular. By the way, the article cited above is old.]

From: GreatFailureOfXp [A "Top 10 Dying Technologies" list that includes XP: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=842] [Various problems with XP are listed at http://members.cox.net/cobbler/XPDangers.htm]

[The first article is by a ZDNET hack, no doubt fishing for readership, who claims XP is disappearing because of the lack of job postings requiring XP and attributes this to offshore outsourcing. This is the antithesis of sound research. She seems unaware of the vast amount of development still going on onshore that simply assume Agile/XP knowledge, because it's now mainstream and ubiquitous and is taught in universities and colleges along side other methodologies, and is given no more or less weight than any other. It's also highly likely that some outsourcers are using at least some Agile/XP techniques internally.]

[The second article is a student dissertation and now quite old (2002), so it's rather lacking in weight. However, identifying problems with XP (and, indeed, there are many) should not be conflated with the notion that XP has failed, is on the way out, or is dead. In fact, identifying problems is evidence of a healthy, live thing, at least as of 2002. There's little point in identifying problems in something that's failed or dead.]

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So perhaps then, to attempt to answer the original question about design being dead, I don't think it is as easy as that. It is a matter of degrees of original design, and how much additional designing (or revisiting design) along the way. If there is a goal, then there has to be some design to get started, then redesigning/revisiting to get to ( or near) that goal, it seems to me.