Matt Stephens (born 1971) is an author and software process expert based in London, UK. In January 2010 he founded independent book publisher Fingerpress UK Ltd, and in November 2014 he founded the Virtual Reality book discovery site Inkflash. He is known for having spoken out against what he regards as popular (or populist) software development fashions, most notably

Extreme Programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, P ...

Enterprise JavaBeans Jakarta Enterprise Beans (EJB; formerly Enterprise JavaBeans) is one of several Java APIs for modular construction of enterprise software. EJB is a server-side software component that encapsulates business logic of an application. An EJB ...

(EJB) and the

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...

programming language. He has co-authored four books on software development: ''Design Driven Testing: Test Smarter, Not Harder'', ''Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Theory and Practice'', ''Agile Development with ICONIX Process'', and ''Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP''.Stephens, M. & Rosenberg, D. (2003). ''Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP''. Apress. . He is also a columnist for

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tech ...

, a UK-based IT news website where he writes a monthly "Agile Iconoclast" column on software design and programming,''Agile Iconoclast'' column at ''The Register''
/ref> and has written for

Dr Dobb's Journal ''Dr. Dobb's Journal'' (''DDJ'') was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on ...

, ''Software Development Magazine'', ''Application Development Trends'' and other journals and websites.Matt Stephens on Software Reality
/ref> Stephens' first book, ''Extreme Programming Refactored'', has proved to be controversial as it satirizes the popular

(XP)

agile methodology In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...

. The book triggered a lengthy debate in articles, internet newsgroups, and web-site chat areas. The core argument of the book is that XP is fragile rather than agile, as its practices are interdependent but that few practical organizations are willing/able to adopt all the practices; therefore the entire process fails. On the book's first page he points out that he is not "anti-agile", rather that the XP process is a fragile implementation of the values described in the

Agile Manifesto In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...

. In ''Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML'', Stephens outlines an extension to the

ICONIX ICONIX is a software development methodology which predates both the Rational Unified Process (RUP), Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile software development. Like RUP, the ICONIX process is UML Use Case driven but more lightweight than RUP. ICONIX ...

object modeling process which he and co-author

Doug Rosenberg Doug is a male personal name (or, depending on which definition of "personal name" one uses, part of a personal name). It is sometimes a given name (or "first name"), but more often it is hypocorism (affectionate variation of a personal name) which ...

termed ''Design Driven Testing'' (DDT), a deliberate reversal of Test Driven Development (TDD), a core tenet of XP. DDT provides a method of creating unit tests and customer acceptance tests that are driven from the design and behavioral requirements (use cases). DDT and the ICONIX modeling process have been adopted in a variety of large-scale software projects e.g. the image processing software in the

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, previously referred to as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory currently under construction in Chile. Its main task will be carrying out a synoptic astronomical survey, the Le ...

(LSST).Designing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with Enterprise Architect (case study)
/ref> In ''Design Driven Testing'', Stephens compares DDT with TDD, and applies DDT on a real project run by ESRI Systems, to create a GIS mapping system for travel website VResorts.com.

Notes and references

External links

* Matt Stephens' website at http://articles.softwarereality.com * Fingerpress book publisher http://www.fingerpress.co.uk * Inkflash Virtual Reality website http://inkflash.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Stephens, Matt 1971 births Living people Writers from London British computer programmers British technology writers