What Can ICONIX Process Do for My Project?

ICONIX Process is a cookbook-style guide that describes how to get from use cases to code. As such, its main concern is with the analysis and design modeling aspects of software production.

If ICONIX Process had a mission statement, it would be this:

Root out ambiguity from the requirements, and then do a clean design.

There’s a good reason for taking this approach. Inconsistently written use cases immediately give you ambiguity to resolve. If the ambiguity isn’t addressed, then it wends its way into the full set of use cases, the design, and (worst of all) the source code. This in turn leads to all sorts of costly, insidious bugs. That’s why it’s important to root out the ambiguity as early as possible—right back at the requirements analysis stage.

ICONIX Process provides the low-level logical process: how to get from use cases to code in a specific, repeatable manner. What it doesn’t specifically address is the high-level organization of a project, which agile methodologies tend to address. As we discussed in Chapter 1, it’s these high-level organizational areas that usually vary the most from project to project, so these parts of any process need to be the most flexible.

Working code that meets the requirements and is developed in a timely manner is what it’s all about. ICONIX Process’ safety nets of written requirements and written use cases make it easy to verify that the code meets the requirements.

ICONIX Process is also about avoiding analysis paralysis. We are very much opposed to high-ceremony methodologies that demand that you produce X, Y, and Z layers of documentation, and dot every “i” and cross every “t” before proceeding to the next stage. ICONIX Process, by contrast, is lightweight and highly iterative, and it’s focused on getting you to the source code as quickly as possible (but without throwing away the benefits of an up-front analysis and design process).