Re: HOOD?

[Hugh Dunne <dunneh@lhd.logica.com>]

On the plus side, I think the basic idea of HOOD is very sensible. When
you have an extremely complex system, dividing it up hierarchically is
(or at least can be) a natural way of getting a handle on it and taming
the complexity.

On the other hand, HOOD is formalised to a very large degree and this is
bad. With any methodology there is a temptation to tart it up with fancy
symbols and force an appearance of rigour and universality on it that
just isn't justified, and HOOD is particularly prone to this. The reason
this is bad is that instead of the methodology being a *tool* which helps
you to get the work done, it starts to drive the work and creates more
work for you to do, more things to dot and cross. In my experience
everyone who uses HOOD has to adapt it to their own needs and relax some
of the more onerous restrictions, otherwise they'd never get much code
written. The outcome is a constant battle between the developers and
the customer's QA auditors who want to see every little rule and
regulation followed to the letter even if it totally obscures the design!

As for tools, stay well away from Concerto - it is a total dog! It is by
far the most user-hostile, obscure, idiosyncratic and all-round
infuriating piece of software I've ever had to endure.

Select Software used to do a cheap and cheerful HOOD tool which didn't do
code generation but had just about everything I needed - this was several
years ago so I don't know what they offer at present.

DISCLAIMER (since my .sig is probably not explicit enough) - the above
opinions are strictly my own personal opinions and in no way reflect
the opinions of Logica.
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