Feature Driven Development

History

FDD was created by Jeff De Luca to meet the specific needs of a 15 month, 50 person software development project at a large bank in Singapore in 1997. There was a second project that was 18 months and 250 persons. He delivered a set of five processes that covered the development of an overall model and the listing, planning, design and building of features.

The development of an overall model process was heavily influenced by Peter Coad´s approach to object modeling. Building a feature list process incorporates Peter Coad's ideas of using a feature list to manage functional requirements and development tasks.

The other three processes and the blending of the processes into a cohesive whole is a result of Jeff De Luca's experience. Since its successful use on the Singapore project there have been several implementations of FDD.

The description of FDD was first introduced in Chapter 6 of the book Java Modeling in Color with UML by Peter Coad, Eric Lefebvre and Jeff De Luca in 1999.

The latest FDD processes can be found on Jeff De Luca´s website under the ´Article´ area. There is also a Community website available at which people can learn more about FDD, questions can be asked, and experiences and the processes itself are discussed. Feature Driven Development

FDD Process

Acitivity	Tasks	Artifacts
Develop Overall Model	High Level walk though of the scope of the project. Detailed domain walk throughs are held for each modeling area	The model
Build a Feature List	Identify Feature List. Breakdown Feature List into Business Activities.	Features are now small pieces of client-valued functions expressed in the form [Action], [Result], [Object].
Plan by Feature	Prioritize Features. Assign Features.	Deliver a Development Plan.
Design by Feature	An Architect selects a small group of features that are to be developed within two weeks.	Designs for each Feature
Build by Feature	Development Teams begin coding Features. Unit Test Developed.	Feature Delivered to Main Build.