Javapolis Day 2 - Spring 2.0 & Agile Development

Title says it all

• Spring Business tier gave me quite a surprise as finally we can create those dreaded XML files by the use of schema's so validation won't have to be done at runtime anymore. Also something like custom tags will be in the next version of spring allowing some commonly classes to be used without the FQ package name. Among others, tags for properties and transactions.Can't wait to get my hands on this release...
  
  


• The afternoon I didn't know what to choose at first. OK Spring Web and Ajax were kinda appealing, but since it was more of the same, I decided to listen to Scott W. Ambler on Agile Model Driven Development. Not with much hope as at that time I didn't know he was such a big shot. He did mention some pain points in development. Like traditional development cycles taking too long and losing touch with customer and requirements. Or how to handle burocratic managers requiring an overload of documentation.
  
  
  He also made the case against requirements up front. As most customers will then try to come up with as much requirements as they can think of at the time loosing touch with the actual requirements. Hence applications can be made were two thirds of the functionalities aren't used at all, causing these projects to go over-time and budget. We should therefor allow our customers to change their minds.
  
  
  However, most of the customers expect projects to go over-time and budget, so they endorse fixed-price projects. This forces us then back to the old style where we need the requirements back up front since otherwise we can't make our estimates about the application. sigh...