craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) (06/17/90)
Hi,
Unlike most things with an interesting title, this one actually contains some
of what it asks for. Read on.
I am interested in any and all real-world (working, delivered, supported as a
product or inhouse system) examples of object-oriented technology and
techniques in use. There seems to be a dearth of them in the literature,
and yet case studies are usually pretty important in disseminating knowledge.
I am willing to do my bit. Anything I get, I will write up in a fairly
traditional business-case format, to the degree possible, and send back to
the contributor. I won't repost it if they don't want me to, and I will
report it with names changed to protect the innocent. But I would really
like a few numbers to go with the marketing hype... :)
Some facts are really useful:
performance measures of the shop using structured design
exact O-O technologies used
exact O-O methods and techniques used
whether O-O analysis was attempted, or structured analysis adapted
whether it was a reengineering of an existing application
number of people, timeline, responsibility division of group
performance of same group, same technology, on succeeding projects
degree of software reuse
This got a pretty poor response in comp.sw.components alone, so I thought I
would go further, since anything real has in all likelihood been delivered in
one of the languages popular enough to have a group. I will clean up and
repost any cases that I receive in the appropriate group (i.e. not everywhere),
unless I get requests not to do so. Properly-stated case studies tend to be
useful in convincing management to spring for more O-O projects... especially
if you told them they would get big payoffs out of the first one...
For those who read this far, here's the two I already got, as is:
-------------
CASE 1 as is : a happy story
------------
The Symbolics Genera operating system, development environment, and
add-on packages comprise 5 million lines of source code written in
Lisp/Flavors, written over a period of 10 years by a programming
staff that never exceeded 20 people. Genera, the finest
development environment in the world, has undergone continuous
evolution and occasional revolution (e.g., a new OOP system, a new
windowing system) while maintaining a remarkable degree of
application compatibility and unparalleled programmer/user
extensibility.
Lawrence G. Mayka
AT&T Bell Laboratories
lgm@ihlpf.att.com
Standard disclaimer.
---------------
CASE 2, as is: names removed to protect the innocent.
----------------
I have only 1 oop project to report on. It is not a good
story. The product was finally finished but not on time
and had none of the promised benefits. We used objective-C.
Lots of problems with the product, we had no good libraries
for the kind of things we wanted to do so experienced no
code reuse benefits. Training was not good enough, fast enough.
Testing was not properly planned or estimated. The project
overran the budget ~50% and was 6 mos late.
Please share the results of your posting if you can.
Thanks,
---------------------------
MY RESPONSE:
Your results from a single project are very typical. Nobody has
got any benefits out of a first project, that I know of... they
usually have to build the libraries, climb up the learning curve,
retrain people to think the right way, find new paradigms for thinking
about funding, testing, etc... Considering that the *average* software
project using structured techniques is 100% over budget and 12 mos. late,
you did twice as well (that is no joke, that is a real stat from somewhere).
How did you do on your *second* project ? The succeeding projects are where
everyone posts gains, never the first.
Where did you get your training ? Did you train in both the language *and*
object-oriented techniques, design, and analysis ? Did the approaches fit ?
Did it all come from the language vendor ?
-----------------------
Waiting for replies,
Sincerely,
Craig Hubley
Craig Hubley & Associates
--
Craig Hubley -------------------------------------
Craig Hubley & Associates "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------
craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu mnetor!utgpu!craig@uunet.UU.NET