The development process - a look at OpenUP

I've encountered a number of companies that eschew any kind of formal process. The thought seems to be that a development process, any process, impedes flexibility and bogs down the process (lowercase p) of development. Personally, I've always been skeptical of processes for similar reasons. As a developer, you feel constrained by what your role is defined as, in any specific development methodology.

The longer I do what I do, the more I find that process isn't bad; it's the processes that we have (or had) that were bad. It's the type of process that needlessly constrains and restricts more so than having a process at all. Because of this belief, I was relieved when I first discovered agile methods. I was late to the game, to be sure, but I was equally impressed, none the less.

I read, on some random blog (sorry, I don't recall which one), about OpenUP - described as a lean Unified Process that applies iterative and incremental approaches within a structured lifecycle. In my reading of the wiki, I found that it's very easy to understand in about fifteen minutes, even for mere mortals (read: non-PMPs or trained project managers) provided you have a rudimentary understanding of software development. It has some interesting advantages:

• Low-ceremony
• Tool agnostic
• Project type independent
• Attention to small time windows (talks about days and months, not years)

Of course, it's also chock full of the normal agile development goodies like acceptance of change, iterative thinking, and so forth. It's interesting to see people defining simple, easy to understand and implement, processes that, themselves, are open to refinement. It just makes sense.

Give it a look. It's neat stuff.

OpenUP Wiki