Episode 83: Jeff DeLuca on Feature Driven Development

Origins

Jeff DeLuca, the creator of Feature Driven Development (FDD), shares insights into its origins and objectives. FDD, a part of the agile methodologies family, was developed as a practical approach to managing software projects, focusing on fixed-price contracts and project management challenges 1. It consists of five concise processes, each described in just a few pages, unlike the extensive documentation of other methodologies like RUP. The process begins with domain modeling, involving domain experts and senior developers to collaboratively create UML class diagrams, facilitating knowledge transfer and requirements discovery 2.

Feature driven development is really just the way I run software projects, and I've been doing that for some period of time.

--- Jeff DeLuca

   

Agile Comparison

FDD distinguishes itself from other agile methods like Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) by emphasizing upfront domain modeling and feature lists. While all these methods are iterative and incremental, FDD's approach allows for better project tracking and accuracy by establishing a baseline early on 3. This contrasts with XP, where coding begins almost immediately. FDD's features are more granular than user stories or use cases, allowing for precise functional decomposition of the domain. Jeff DeLuca highlights the flexibility of combining FDD with other agile practices, such as Scrum, to leverage their strengths in management and implementation 4.

If you call yourself an agilist or part of that agile community, but you want to argue at the detail level about DSDM versus scrum versus whatever, then you don't get agile.

--- Jeff DeLuca