Chapter 10: Wrapping Up

Overview

Despite any appearances to the contrary, objects are not something you do; objects are a way that you think. To illustrate object thinking, it was necessary, in preceding chapters, to distinguish between thoughts you would have at different points in the development process and to differentiate between thoughts reflecting a holistic perspective and those that had a precise focus. It would be easy, but wrong, to see phases, cookbook methods , and even prescriptive modeling requirements in the last three chapters.

The material in Chapters 7 through 9 is an expression of the principles, practices, values, metaphors, and the definitions presented in the first six chapters. Object thinking requires developers to master the ideas so as to understand the sample expressions and, more important, to be able, themselves , to craft appropriate expressions of those ideas in response to the novel problems they encounter in their own work.

An individual s object thinking takes place inside her head ”unobserved by others, who can see only the product of that thought. The concerted object thinking of a team is also mostly inside their heads, but it is sometimes manifest in the communication products they produce and utilize as a kind of external group memory. Ephemera like whiteboard drawings, story cards, poster graphs, and visual metaphors and models are but byproducts of object thinking.

The product of object thinking is software that manifests simplicity and composability, which lead, in turn , to adaptability, flexibility, and evolvability. If object thinking is done in the context of XP (which contributes refactoring and test-driven development techniques that complement object thinking) and agile development, the shared focus on the problem space and the needs of the customer results in software that is usable and demonstrably supportive of business/ user requirements.

Unfortunately, there are circumstances in which it is difficult if not impossible to apply object thinking.