Design vs. Process

Eli Lopian    .NET Tests, TDD    

Oren Eini has posted Tools vs. Design about the Really Simple Dialog post.

It is NOT the design that will give you the freedom to expand and build extendable and maintainable systems. It is impossible to see the future and to implement the best design, that is what YAGNI is about. It is the process that will allow us to meet future requirements. A process that will allow us to change the design as the features grow.

Lets recall the TDD process:

Write Tests -> Code -> Refactor (Design)

Notice that the Design stage is the LAST stage, it is not:

Design (For Testability) -> Test -> Code

Of course we need Tools to support this process, the tools are a testing framework, continuous integration server, and perhaps a mocking framework to allow testing your code no matter what design you chose. We might end up with the same design that Jeremy started with, but we might not. The code might be simple enough to just be there, saving time maintaining the complex MVP code, that many developers are still learning. We do have the option to change this in the future if our code is becoming complex enough to require this.

Using this process we can give our customers business value and shorten the Time To Market, while leaving the option of growth when needed.

I will conclude, a good process is critical to building maintainable, customer value systems, on the other hand shouting out OO Principles will not ensure this

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