CMU-CS-03-152
Computer Science Department
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University



CMU-CS-03-152

How Useful Is the Metaphor Component of Agile Methods?
A Preliminary Study

James Tomayko*, James Herbsleb*

June 2003

Also appears as
Institute for Software Research International
Technical Report CMU-ISRI-03-100

CMU-CS-03-152.pdf


Keywords: Software engineering methods, eXtreme Programming, metaphor


The metaphor is the practice of agile processes most ignored by practitioners. A metaphor is meant to be agreed upon by all members of a project as a means of simply explaining the purpose of the project and thus guide the structure of the architecture, thus it is very important for communication, both among the team and with the client. Since both customers and developers alike use the metaphor to clarify the project, a good metaphor should be easily understandable to customers, yet have sufficient content that it can guide architecture development. This paper experiments with the metaphor as a communication tool.

11 pages

* Institute for Software Research International, School of Computer Science,
Carnegie Mellon University


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