From the course: Agile Software Development

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Empiricism

Empiricism

From the course: Agile Software Development

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Empiricism

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- Empiricism is the concept that knowledge is based on evidence and experience. This is the exact opposite of predictive planning, which encourages detailed planning upfront based on assumptions. Let's assume you want to drive from Downtown Sacramento to Downtown San Francisco. What do we know about the commute? We know that the distance between Downtown Sacramento and Downtown San Francisco is about 90 miles, and that you plan to start your drive at around 4:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. No GPS system is available, so you will need to estimate the commute time. The predictive approach would divide the distance by the speed the driver typically drives. So if we were to divide 90 miles by 65 miles per hour, we would estimate a commute time of one hour and 23 minutes. This approach has a fundamental flaw as it ignores the context and experience of the conditions in the real world. One empirical approach would be to use the calculation from the previous step, but add about 30 minutes to…

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