About Chapter 3. Requirements Change

Image from Lea from flickr

After reading Chapter 3 of HOOODA I discovered that change is something that we need to get used to. A cool thing that I learnt is that change in software is good because it is what keep us with a job. If our client doesn’t need new features in his product then our work is done. Change is our friend and a good developer needs to have a plan when change arrives to the life. Is your code prepared to change?

Let’s play a game. Suppose that it is your first job and you’re working with a management system for a store. At the beginning it is simple: each product has a price and you create the ticket adding up all the product prices. Think about the classes that you would need for this requirement. Let me know when you finish.

Done? Cool. Now let’s add some fun. How would you handle discounts? Let’s suppose that some products have a 20% discount. A simple parameter inside each product class should work right? It is no big deal until now.

Let’s add a new type of discount: when you buy two gallons of milk, the third is completely free. Mmmh, seems that you cannot handle this in the product class, you need to do this processing inside the class that creates the ticket, but then you need to pass some extra params to this class. Are you ready for the challenge?

As developers, change is part of our soul. Even ourselves need to continue learning every time and get the latest technologies in order to get hired in a good company.

When did everything start? Well, «Embrace change» is a phrase that comes from the XP values and principles. XP stands for Extreme Programming and is an agile methodology that is plenty used in software development as well as Scrum, Kanban and many others.

A group of people decided to change the old and inefficient methods and started their own methodologies and int brought amazing results to the industry.

Being prepared to change is the skill of this century.

Here is a video if you want to know more about embracing changes an many more principles from XP:

References:

Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design: A Brain Friendly Guide to OOA&D. A McLaughlin, B, A Pollice, G, A West, D. 2007. O’Reilly Media, Incorporated.