Getting Real Done for Real Windows Programmers?

Question

Anybody tried here using Getting Real(37Signals) approach to develop windows application? (C#/.NET). Or simply put, developing project using agile.

We develop windows application which sucks development time. We never get concrete UI definition from Client. We never had any decent design due to this problem or something else.

How do you people manage desktop application development from scratch?

We use,

• C#
• Smart Client
• CAB
• Visual Studio 2008
• WCF
• OPC UA

our team

• 2 developer (6 years experience)
• 4 developer (less than 1 year experience)
• 1 test engineer (1 year exp)

We follow "Scrum".

What is the best approach to develop a window application (including UI definition, Prototyping, Usability testing, Development, Deployment)?

Answer 1

I'm not sure that "decent design" and "never get concrete UI definition" are that connected... personally, I'm an "under the bonnet" guy, so I concentrate on the underlying design/architecture - as long as the overall use-cases are understood (i.e. "I'm going to need to be able to get all [this] info efficently given just [this], etc") then you should be able to design the overall system (and unit test it) independently of the UI.

Or do you just mean the UI design?

Well, regarding the UI; if you have separate design ("pretty") and developer ("code") heads, then consider WPF; the xaml split between blend and VS allows much cleaner separation, allowing your designers to tweak the UI largely in isolation (give or take a few hooks to the dev team).

For deployment; ClickOnce is pretty painless if it is an option.

Answer 2

Nobody gets a concrete UI definition from the client. Scrum should help you deal with the changing/not concrete UI definition. My experience is you get some type of analogy for the design (Make it look like Outlook or my cell phone or some web page.). Then you show the client something and now they have a better idea of how they really want it to look (Move this, rename that, make that a combo box, does that come in red?, etc.). You'll go through this with every form, menu and report each one several times.