Considering there are smaller IT companies in Australia as compared to the West, I'm wondering if such companies exist here which treat unit testing, design and documentation at par with the coding phase.

As per my experience and what I heard from my friends working in Australian software houses that they do pretend they follow SDLC when talking to clients and while hiring candidates but often neglect the following activities

1. Writing unit test cases and code coverage of each single line of written code.

2. Creating design phase UML models, UI Layout to DB mapping docs, Class diagrams, planning viewmodels, etc

3. Creating release notes, deployments manuals for every minor/major release

4. Having build automation, symbol servers, Gated checkins, Continuous integration, source code merge policies, StyleCop adherance

5. Threat modeling, formal code reviews and risk assessments.

From what I gather most or all of the above activities are sacrificed for the namesake of Agile. Is it true or am I in the wrong side of the town

In my experience, yes! And it can cause a lot of problems...

This is hardly unique of Australia, it happens everywhere.

We used to follow all these processes back in India and ofcourse the big names follow this in Seattle, Toronto and St Petersburg. I hope there are hidden gems here also.

I have worked for some big names who do not and I dont think you could generalise about those cities?! ... IT project disciplines vary widely across different industries, sizes of business etc.

In Aus, my experience is that there are a LOT of small and medium-sized businesses, and there is a tendency to use 3rd parties as opposed to building large IT depts. This is in comparison with Europe and the US. Additionally Aus businesses are more pragmatic doers, very much like the US.

So you see a really mixed bag of approaches. Generally, it tends towards the less-formal and structured, and I have noticed a move towards Agile in the Mel IT world.

We have been practicing Agile and Scrum now for well over a year and I personally think we are doing pretty damn well [we have a couple of SERIOUS Agile Evangelists on the team] and that is a team consensus.

We implement everything you have mentioned EXPECT point 2 which smells of big, up-front design and is a no-no. Also our code reviews aren't stunningly formal but they are done properly.

All you sacrifice with Agile is the waterfall method which just doesn't work - almost everything else you mention is essential for quality and reliability anyway.

p.s. this is a big commercial product encompassing servers, embedded hardware, external devices etc and EVERYTHING is done using Agile, XP etc. We have sold the customer on the process and he is very happy with the results.

FYI, Australia is commonly included in the "west".

I concur with the others.....you are on the wrong side of town...we do a lot of that and more Every country/city in the world has a variety of companies doing good and bad....

Becomes a compulsion if you are developing a commercial product. I was referring more to consulting projects which tend to overlook these processes due to squeezed budgets.

Hmm.. will surf further

BTW Waterfall isn't supposed to work. It only exists as a name for the example of something you shouldn't be doing in software development (or indeed most normal projects).

It, and its cousin V, are dumb approaches that have stuck because .... well people are dumb.

If you have a project manager that goes straight to waterfall or V, or worse won't budge from them; run away

StyleCop is really more like StyleNazi...

I've done a lot of Agile in a past company and I definitely rate it. Using Agile doesn't mean you have to sacrifice design, unit testing and Continuous build etc etc. It's more about how you choose to iterate, over what period of time, incorporating which features and maintain an acceptable velocity, allowing for delivery on time (or a better chance of). It also promotes self-delegation and autonomy in the team, meaning work can be based on an empirically driven consensus and not an ill-informed opinion of a product manager. The product manager still has his place in the whole process, prioritising units of work to include in the burndown list but past that the development team takes over.

Sounds like you and your friends could be working for more professional companies MP. There are lots of them out there that follow best practice. The challenge for you is to get to work for them. There will always be plenty of 'DodgyBrothers Inc.' companies to work for.. You will find the better companies do not hire as often as you might like as their staff retention is better. As a new arrival into Aus, it can sometimes take a few years of hard work and networking to break into 'the right side' of town. That certainly was my experience. It can be frustrating at times. Hang in there. You will find a couple of years can make all the difference.

I agree with what you've seen so far. As with any of the models its one thing in theory and another in practice. Agile if followed correctly is good but most of the time its not. Not by a long shot as its very easy not to follow it correctly. Turns into lets just bumble along, get it all in as quickly as possible and there you go. No proper planning, static testing done beforehand

V model is more cut and dried - you either do it or you don't. With modern approaches and 'we need this in yesterday' Agile is unfortunately the way ahead.

As one of the guys here said though i don't think its just Oz. More companies in UK were starting to use it when i left.

Thats where the problem starts when IT orgs say "customer needs this fixed by tomorrow". Fix it in code and deploy it. Thats when they bypass all the processes of updating the design docs, creating release notes, reviewing code the fix, testing all paths of the fix, etc. Its just a quick and dirty fix and straight to production.. And this becomes a habit and a 'sick form of Agile'

Yes its true but its like many things in life. You may not agree with it but thats the way it is. I just think of the money and that gets me through the day