Modern C++ Programming with Test-Driven Development

6.3 Where Is the Up-Front Design?

If you were building code in the 1990s, odds are good that your team expended a considerable amount of up-front effort to produce design models. You might have worked with use cases to understand the requirements and subsequently created class diagrams, state models, sequence diagrams, collaboration diagrams, component models, and so on.

Chances are that you create few of these models today. The interest in Agile has led to teams abandoning the production of detailed design models. “Agile says we don’t have to do design,” or so I’ve heard.

Just what ​does​ Agile say about design? The Agile principles (part of the Agile Manifesto; see ​http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html​ ) suggest that the software must ...