Part 2: Agile ICONIX Process in PracticeThe Mapplet Project

Chapter List

Chapter 5: Introducing the Mapplet Project

Chapter 6: Modeling the Mapplet (Release 1)

Chapter 7: Synchronizing the Model and Code—One Small Release at a Time

Chapter 8: Mapplet Release 2

This part of the book features a running example project that will thread through the various chapters. We’ll illustrate many of the points we made in using this example project. The project is real—it’s not an academic exercise—and we’ve taken snapshots during the various iterations of modeling, prototyping, and coding.

This being a book about agile development (i.e., adapting to changing requirements over time), our idea is to present the original project requirements and show that even though the requirements evolved over the course of the project, we were still able to incorporate up-front modeling into the development process. The story that unfolds is very much the story of how to approach this situation.

The use case text and diagrams shown in this part’s chapters were taken directly from the project, so you’ll notice some (minor) inconsistencies at times between the use cases and the text in the diagrams. This also reflects the “agile spirit”: the analysis and design artifacts need to be just good enough to get us to the next stage of development. (Or, to put it another way, they need to be minimal yet sufficient. The team should always try to avoid spending ages polishing the diagrams until they’re perfect.)