Agile modeling

The best practices of AMDD are:

1. Active Stakeholder Participation. Stakeholders should provide information in a timely manner, make decisions in a timely manner, and be as actively involved in the development process through the use of inclusive tools and techniques.
2. Architecture Envisioning. At the beginning of an agile project you will need to do some initial, high-level architectural modeling to identify a viable technical strategy for your solution.
3. Document Late. Write documentation as late as possible, avoiding speculative ideas that are likely to change in favor of stable information.
4. Executable Specifications. Specify requirements in the form of executable "customer tests", and your design as executable developer tests, instead of non-executable "static" documentation.
5. Iteration Modeling. At the beginning of each iteration you will do a bit of modeling as part of your iteration planning activities.
6. Just Barely Good Enough (JBGE) artifacts. A model or document needs to be sufficient for the situation at hand and no more.
7. Model a bit Ahead. Sometimes requirements that are nearing the top of your priority stack are fairly complex, motivating you to invest some effort to explore them before they're popped off the top of the work item stack so as to reduce overall risk.
8. Model Storming. Throughout an iteration you will model storm on a just-in-time (JIT) basis for a few minutes to explore the details behind a requirement or to think through a design issue.
9. Multiple Models. Each type of model has it's strengths and weaknesses. An effective developer will need a range of models in their intellectual toolkit enabling them to apply the right model in the most appropriate manner for the situation at hand.
10. Prioritized Requirements. Agile teams implement requirements in priority order, as defined by their stakeholders, so as to provide the greatest return on investment (ROI) possible.
11. Requirements Envisioning. At the beginning of an agile project you will need to invest some time to identify the scope of the project and to create the initial prioritized stack of requirements.
12. Single Source Information. Strive to capture information in one place and one place only.
13. Test-Driven Design (TDD). Write a single test, either at the requirements or design level, and then just enough code to fulfill that test. TDD is a JIT approach to detailed requirements specification and a confirmatory approach to testing.