Software Developer. Jill Clarke

       It is not suitable for all products. Agile is a favoured style for projects which meet the following criteria:poorly defined or incomplete requirements;shorter timescales;the customer wants to use iterative features during the build process (features that are added a bit at a time as the product evolves);the development team is not too large;customer involvement is possible.

       While you still create documentation in Agile projects it is typically not as comprehensive as that created in projects managed with more traditional techniques. This might be a problem for companies that need extensive audit trails or specifications for legal reasons.

      Beyond programming: deployment, maintenance and support

      Some developers will spend a percentage of their time involved in bug fixing and amending or maintaining older (known as legacy) code. These tasks, along with post-deployment support, are considered to be a normal part of the developer role.

SUMMARY

      This chapter looked at the context for development including where development is used, and where and when development fits into a software or systems life cycle. It also began to look at what developers do in the context of systems development. The next chapter will look at the role in more detail, including what skills are necessary to fulfil the role plus the types of responsibility you should expect to have as a software developer.

      3 THE ROLE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

      Prolific developers don’t always write a lot of code, instead they solve a lot of problems. The two things are not the same.

      J. Chambers, Creator of the S programming language

      This chapter looks at the role of developer in more detail, specifically what the skills and knowledge needed for the role are, and what responsibilities you will have as a software developer.