As most folks know, I am increasingly disappointed in X-Driven-Y. Test Driven Development, the Original X-Driven-Y, was an actual thing that you could do, measure, and see positive results in. I *love* TDD.
Sometime after TDD we saw “Acceptance Test Driven Development”, “Behavior Driven Development”, “Responsibility Driven Design”, “User Story Driven Development” … the list goes on.
It seems to me that with each new X-Driven-Y we dilute the value of the concept, just like we did with the word “Extreme” in the late 1990’s.
So, I am happy to report, at least someone is doing something interesting with it.
Sean McMillan, the founder of Bacon Driven Methods, just put up a blog site on the subject: Bacon Driven Coding. With any luck, BDC will attract the following it truly deserves and will be able to develop a Bacon-Driven Body of Knowledge (BDBOK) that can serve the world’s bacon-driven needs.
One thing Sean hasn’t addressed yet is adoption and buy-in, especially from senior management. Personally, I’ve found the best approach is to simply eat the bacon yourself, show some results, and get others to eat Bacon. I honestly have not seen much success with Top-Down implementations of BCD; BCD seems to defy such traditional command-and-control methods.
For those of you skeptical about BDC, I understand. But let me ask you – seriously – have you tried it? If you’ve been critical about BDC without trying it, I would encourage you to give it a shot.
Bacon, then code is a very foreign concept to most employers. Most are used to code, then bring home the bacon. 🙂
Is there an alternative for those that don’t eat pork? Tofu-Driven Development just doesn’t seem as good.
Now that I’ve have my bacon (in a sandwich with turkey, tomato, cucumber, and onions), I’m ready to do some development. I expect it to work better than hunger-driven development.
Ben Simo
QuestioningSoftware.com
Francis Bacon? Roger Bacon?
—Michael B.