Technical Review of Trace Cards

Received: March 24, 2003

Subject: Agile Development 2003 Technical Papers Notification

From: Agile Development 2003 - CyberChair

Dear Nik Boyd,

On behalf of the Agile Development Conference Technical Paper committee, I regret to inform you that your paper

"Trace Cards"

has been not been accepted for presentation at the conference. Please find enclosed reviewers' comments on your paper that we sincerely hope you find useful to enhance your paper for a future conference. Should you have additional questions please feel to contact me directly either via email or at ADC.

Thank you for your contribution to the conference.

Dave,

Dave Thomas
Agile Development Conference Technical Papers Chair
Email: dave@bedarra.com

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First reviewer's review:

>>> Summary of the submission <<<

This paper presents a technique for gathering requirments via index cards in a CRC card manner.

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>>> Evaluation <<<

The paper was not easy to read. It assumed knowledge not in the paper, such as information from Alistair Cockburns book. The example cards were hard to follow because they did not follow the same theme/domain throughout. Sometimes it was hard to see how the left column of a card relate to a right column. Has this technique ever been tried on a real project or it is just a vision of the author of the paper. I wanted to know that the technique was actually used by someone and what kind of results they had. Did it help anything by using this technique?

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Second reviewer's review:

>>> Summary of the submission <<<

Paper describes a schema for writing requirement-related facts on index cards.

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>>> Evaluation <<<

There is no indication that the proposed artifacts have ever been created or evaluated in any situation, let alone a real development team.

The level of detail suggested would seem a better match for a spreadsheet or database, not index cards.

The complaint about "rushing to solution" on the top of page 11 leads me to believe the author does not value working software and responding to change over documentation and negotiation (terms from agilemanifesto.org). I suspect this paper would be more appropriate for another conference.

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