Deploying Lightweight Processes

Driven by ideas, such as ISO 9000 or CMM many large organizations use processes with lots of documentation and reviews before the teams start to code. In the recent years another process culture has emerged that tries to keep processes as lightweight as possible and programming as early as possible. XP and the Chrystal series are among the youngest members of this process family. Remembering old times many managers associate early programming with undisciplined hacking and therefore decline lightweight processes without studying the details of the ideas. Project staff on the other hand are used to the heavy-weight methodology and - though many of them don't like heavy documentation - often don't know how to work successfully in an environment that works with less (or even without) documents. Many of them are in danger of hacking instead of doing a disciplined lightweight process. This is especially difficult, because in many heavy-weight processes, redundancy and duplication was built in to allow projects to go "off-process", but with a light-weight process, going "off-process" is risky.

Furthermore, lightweight processes usually depend on good communication skills of the team members. Techniques, such as pair programming or collective code ownership, are only feasible if the team members know how to communicate effectively. Unfortunately only few organizations select and train their staff regarding communication skills.

Dealing with these problems over a project's lifetime is the main job of a coach, as opposed to a trainer who is specialized in teaching knowledge. Most consultants have a bag of major and minor techniques to help their clients to cross the chasm. To discuss these techniques and learn from each other is the main goal of this workshop.

How to Attend

Every interested consultant, teacher, academic, or otherwise interested person is invited to apply for attendance. Applicants need to submit a position statement that should be no longer than one page and describe one topic that the applicant plans to contribute to the discussion. This may be a certain technique, an experience report, or any other statement of relevance. The submissions should be in HTML (preferred) or plain ASCII and sent via email to Jens Coldewey (mailto:jens_coldewey@acm.org). The authors will be notified about acceptance by September 8th if they have submitted their position paper due to September 1st. The workshop will be limited to 15 persons.

Workshop Format

The workshop will be held over a full day on Monday, October 16st from 8:30 till 17:00. The format is intentionally lightly structured to leave enough space for the group to find a format everybody is comfortable with. Therefore the following format is just a suggestion to be discussed on site:

• Introduction and name games.
• "Hot Chair": Ten minutes questions and answers for every position paper (There will be no presentations, attendees are required to read the position papers in advance).
• Identification of the main areas of interest.
• Examination of the main areas in small groups.
• Presentation of the group work results.
• Compilation of a final presentation for the conference.

"Right Brain Activities", such as cooperative games and group facilitations will be used to ensure a productive working environment.

Participants and Position Papers

The following ladies, gentlemen, and organizers have provided position papers that have been accepted:

All participants are asked to read all the position papers and prepare two sentences for every paper:

1. "What I really liked about this paper was..."
2. "The most important question I have about this paper is..."

During the hot chair session everyone of us will have the opportunity to acknowledge the authors and toask them the question - and being acknowledged and asked, of course. This will give us the chance to collect enough starting points for our discussion. Please observe that Jutta won't be able to join the workshop itself because of her engagement in the Educator's Symposium.

Final Report

The workshop attendees are supposed to agree on a format for the final report. Possible choices are e.g. a pattern collection, experience reports, or stories. After the conference the report will be compiled to a 2 page summary, published at the OOSPLA web site and a 10 - 15 page report which will be published on this site.

In addition the results will be presented at a poster session during OOPSLA.

About the Organizers

Jens Coldewey is an independent consultant from Munich, Germany, specialized in deploying object-oriented techniques and lightweight processes in large organizations. He was program chair of the EuroPLoP '98 conference, member of the program committee of the PLoP  '98, PLoP '99, and EuroPLoP '99 conference. Among others he was co-organizer of the "Design for Maintenance" Workshop at OOPSLA 99. He writes a regular column on consulting in ObjektSpektrum, the German SIGS magazine on OO.

Jutta Eckstein is an independent trainer and consultant from Munich, Germany. Her interest in lightweight processes is based on ten years experience in developing object-oriented applications. She is a member of the program comitee of XP 2000, EuroPLoP 2000 and OOPSLA 2000. She has led several workshops at OT 98 and 2000, EuroPLoP 99 and OOPSLA 98.

Pete McBreen is an independent consultant from Cochrane, Alberta, Canada. Pete has been quoted as saying "If Software development is not fun, there is something wrong with the process". This reflects his personal philosophy that "the software development process must support the ways that people naturally work. Software systems are such a fundamental part of any corporation that the sustained ability to enhance and extend systems is what matters most. Truly incremental object oriented development processes are a means of achieving this goal." Pete was an co-leader of the "Design for Maintenance" Workshop at OOPSLA 99.

Christa Schwanninger is member of the Software Research Department of Siemens in Munich. She is member of the program comitee of EuroPLoP 2000 and has organized several workshops and tutorials before. Among them are the Pattern Writing Workshops at the EuroPLoP conferences and a series of pattern writing workshops at OOPSLA 98 and OOPSLA 99.