I'm paging through this week's SDTimes, and I come across the opinion pages. Here's an article on software development by Djenana Campara (CTO of a company that sells Q/A tools), talking about how software development is a discipline, not an art.

Ok, I'm interested in that - so I read the article - is she going to advocate a CMMI type approach, an agile type approach... I don't know. After I finished, I still didn't know. I have no idea what she's advocating. She repeated the term "discipline based approach" over and over again, as if that should mean something to me. Sorry, it doesn't. It could mean anything, from a paper driven "fill in the form before proceeding" style to an XP/Agile lightweight set of processes. All by itself though, the term is meaningless. Here's an example:

But to be successful, companies must get their developers to buy into the discipline approach. Coders need to understand how a discipline-based development approach will improve their work life by helping them write code that adheres to corporate guidelines; reducing the monotony of testing for errors, tracking down defects and implementing fixes; and improving their coding quality and productivity.

In addition, by enabling their managers to better gauge the status of a project and the impact of requirement changes, developers will have a better understanding of how realistic project deadlines are.

The payoff? One large development corporation reports that embracing a discipline-based approach has cut the time its developers need to understand an application’s context in half. Another company says that a code analysis that typically required one week now takes only one hour.

It's buzzword bingo, but with a kicker - she won't take the time to explain what the buzzwords even mean. I'd love to know what she's advocating here, but it's impossible to tell.