About this Site

Jeff De Luca's picture

Site Features

Rather than have us just publish static content for your consumption, we have created a community-based site oriented around discussion forums.

Write new forum topics and post your comments on others forum topics. You can upload images and file attachments.

You are encouraged to register your own userid but you can also post comments anonymously if you wish (subject to approval before they are published).

What do I do after I login?

  • Edit your account to create your signature, set your own picture (avatar) and set your timezone
  • Visit the Forums - to see a topic threaded list of forum comments (note: View Recent Posts will also show forum comments)

Tips

  • A little question mark icon beside a word indicates it is a term in the site glossary. Clicking on that icon will take you to that term in the glossary. The glossary is mostly used for acronyms.
  • You don't have to register on this site to read it, but you do have to register to contribute. Sorry - but this became unavoidable due to the volume of spam.
  • On any submission page, look for the list of smileys (emoticons) in the right hand banner area.
  • You can attach files to any comment or forum topic you create. If you would like a file that you attach in this way to also appear in the site Downloads, set your comment or forum topic as "downloadable" on the submission form.
  • Your image/photo gallery is attached to your account. When you create images and submit them to your personal gallery. They are accessible to all users though via the Recent Posts links and by anyone viewing your account (clicking on your name anywhere it appears - for example as the author of a post).
  • You can easily reference (link) an image in a gallery in any other post you make (a forum topic, a comment, etc.) The image reference syntax will be replaced by a thumbnail linked to the real image node. Use the following syntax to do this: [image:node_id,(left|right|top|middle|bottom|absmiddle|texttop|baseline),hspace,vspace,border] every param but image:node_id is optional. The node_id is the number in the url for the real image. For example, the node_id of this readme page is 497 (see the url above in your browser). Thus, if there was an image of node id 497 you would reference it like this (image:497) except you use square brackets instead of the parentheses I just used.
  • You can also reference related books to any topic you start by listing the ISBNs (ASINs) in the Related Books field on the appropriate create content form.

About this Site

Feature Driven Development (FDD) is the name given to my approach to project management. For the longest time, people had asked me to write about how I organise and run software projects. In 1998, I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch with John Gage and I was fascinated by his ideas and thinking. As I described some of the things I was doing he got very animated. He asked "where's your project anthropologist? Who is writing these things down?" From that moment I was inspired to write.

Peter Coad asked me to contribute a chapter on process for his forthcoming color modeling book and so we agreed that FDD would first be written up in that book. I had one month to write the chapter and in the first two weeks, my drafts (in outline form with some body content) spanned all that I do in project management. That is, much of the software development lifecycle and, of course, much of "the project management experience."

It became abundantly clear, that this was a book on its own - and not a small one. The amount of material would completely overwhelm the rest of the color modeling book. So, for the next 2 weeks I essentially deleted material until we ended up with the roughly 20 or so pages that make up chapter 6 of the color modeling book

It's a teaser, and no more, of my approach to software project management. Because I have not written anything more than this, unfortunately and understandably, that thin slice of FDD that appears in chapter 6 has become "all of FDD" to many.

This website is to correct that situation and provide a place for all to discuss FDD, ask questions, learn more about it, and discuss their own experiences and their own FDD-inspired approaches.

The portal for all things FDD.

I welcome submissions from people on things that are FDD-inspired or even things they would claim to be an FDD extension or enhancement. This brings me to rule #1.

Rule #1. I'm not religous about you using FDD. What I am religous about is projects that deliver working software in a timely manner. If you're using some other approach and it's working for you. Great! Keep using it. If it's reliable - then please write about it!

Have fun!

Jeff De Luca

Note: the number of reads on this page is often reset to zero to keep it out of the popular content lists