Evolutionary Design

How does nature evolve organisms and what does that have to do with software development? If you study nature's approach to engineering, you often find that highly sophisticated organisms evolve from simple beginnings. For example, during the earliest growth stages, internal organs are basic but functional and will mature over time.

Hardware manufacturers have known nature's secret for years: they engineer end-to-end solutions early on, learn from their experience and iterate to evolve sophisticated products.

Have you evolved your software in nature's fashion? If not, perhaps you've focused too much on the details and not enough on how to evolve a whole, functional system. In this activity, you'll participate in the evolutionary design of a system.

Flavor: challenge
20 to 60 minutes
After reviewing a description of a sophisticated software system, participants must decide what would be the embryonic version of that system (i.e., the end-to-end system, containing the most critical parts, implemented primitively).

ID: 7A

Flavor: coding
30 to 45 minutes
In a fishbowl, the workshop coaches and participants will begin the implementation of the embryonic system, using Test-Driven Development and Merciless Refactoring.

Requirements: Computer (1), Projector (1), supported IDE, xUnit

ID: 7B

Flavor: walkthrough
20 to 180 minutes
We will review ten practices of evolutionary design that complement Test-Driven Development and Refactoring. We will also study a sequence of snapshopts that reveal how a system evolved from a first failing test to a working application.

Requirements: Projector (1)

ID: 7C

Next 5 Activities

·	Lateral Thinking
·	Learning Design Patterns
·	Programming with Patterns
·	Code Review
·	Team-Programming

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