How the design, composition, placement and use of an artefact serve such that it provides a stratified record of work
Examples of artefact as an audit trial in XP centre around the colour, composition, arrangement and location of three types of cards; 'stories' (orange coloured), 'tasks' (blue) and 'defects' (pink). These cards originate from different sources - orange story cards are written by 'customers', blue task cards by a developer and pink defect cards by a system tester or user. Each card contains up to ten lines of description, a date, a story, task or defect number, and a space for completion times and dates. Cards are written and oftenly initially placed on the noticeboard (see Public Artefact), which signifies them as work to be done. When developers (they work in at least pairs) accept a story, task or defect to work on they will take the card down from the noticeboard and place it by their workstation. When tasks have been complleted the cards are given to the project 'tracker'. The cards themselves, the details they contain (including amendments and annotations), and their placement (on desks, in piles, on the noticeboard - relative to other cards and so forth) afford various types of information to competent practitioners in the workplace. For example, amendments are accountable as being made by a certain person at a certain time, the placement of a series of cards on the board illustrates a process of activities to be carried out, cards on developers desks indicate on-going work, while on the tracker's desk work that has been completed. Various degrees of inspection afford different information, for example, a glance at the board or on tables shows the amount of work and types, more detailed inspection of cards reveals the specifics of the activity. The cards serve to promote coordination between workers - while activities are separated there is always and orientation to a wider process and the intergration of the separate to the whole.
More conventional software development method would usually simply assign tasks to certain developers in a certain degree of isolation. The specific use of different coloured cards which are placed, shared, owned, stacked up, passed on and so forth serve to afford information on the status of work to the group as a whole. Picking a card is a public act, where it is placed in relation to other cards on the board shows what it is related to, people holding many blue cards have a series of tasks to complete and so on. This facilitates a greater orientation within the group to one another's work and the project as a whole.
ArtefactAsAnAuditTrail (last edited 2007-02-13 18:33:49 by PPhillips)