Pdd Patent Application No. 12/840,306

Patent application no. 12/840,306 has been submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office on 21st of July by Yegor Bugayenko, lead architect of TechnoPark Corp.

The invention includes a specific method and software that resolves the problem of "delayed branches" conflict in concurrent distributed software development and in many other types of software development projects.

Every time a developer is working with a branch and sees a problem or a question that needs the participation of another programmer, he implements a temporary solution that keeps the code compilable. He marks the place in the code with @todo tag (called "puzzle") and merges the branch into trunk. The "puzzle" includes the identifier of a task he was working with. As long as the "puzzle" stays in source code, a project manager considers the task as incomplete and pending resolution. The project manager assigns "puzzle" resolution to other team members. When all "puzzles" are resolved, the project manager returns the task back to the programmer, asking him to continue with development.

The key advantage of the PDD method, comparing with all other known approaches, is the absence of long branches. Implementation of every task, no matter how difficult it is, takes a few hours in one iteration. Then the task is set to pending state and new "puzzles" are merged into trunk. Project planning becomes more predictable and simple since the project manager is dealing with a large amount of small, isolated tasks, instead of long and risky activities. With this method, cost and scope control also becomes more effective.

Properly used "puzzles" become the main management and communication mechanism in a distributed software project, replacing e-mails, online discussions, and phone calls. Moreover; the PDD software collects "puzzles" from source code and builds short-term plans of key development tasks.