"I think software does go through phases..."

I struggled to articulate this in my first book though some guys like
Alan Shalloway have said that the way I described it really did switch
a light on for them.

I like the way Chris Matts articulates it. "Software development is an
information arrival process." We happen to have given names to stages
of arrival. Those names are things like analyzed, designed, coded,
tested. TDD might a different approach but there is still an
information arrival process. How many tests have been written and how
many of them are passing. I suspect there is still an "analyzed" stage
where the test to be written have been defined.

Hence, if we want to track how developed something is we ask how much
information has arrived and give stages of arrival names for
convenience. In some development processes those stages also coincide
with handoffs between specialist functions. Sometimes they don't. In
some craft style processes there is no relationship between handoffs
and information arrival.

Regardless of whether there are handoffs or not we can still manage it
with kanban. There is benefit in limiting WIP and pulling value through.

David

--- In kanbandev@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Sanders" <aremsan@...> wrote:
>
> I think software does go through phases, just how big/long to they
have to be? How big do