I am a Java Programmer in Amsterdam, The Netherlands but I grew up in the North East Of England. I'm also studying part-time at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation in Amsterdam to try and satisfy my interest in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing.
I'm trying out iterative Test Driven Development as a way of:
coping with incomplete requirements up front
introducing automated regression tests
encouraging more modular design
I'm also studying Design Patterns in the hope that they will allow me to generate better designs more quickly. Test Driven Design And Patterns is a discussion of them both by Ralph Johnson.
I used to work in manufacturing as a shop floor engineer, and part of my work involved Statistical Process Control. I haven't done much thinking about how techniques used in the manufacturing industry could support software engineering, but recent discussions in my regular web haunts have led me to believe that I should. More to follow I hope.
There's some discussion on this site regarding the Analogy Between Programming And Manufacturing. As someone with direct experience of both, I would say that applications are actually quite like manufacturing processes/machines/robots: you design them, you build them, you run them (and tweak them) until no-one needs the output anymore. The programmers are the engineers - the users are the operators. So I would tend to agree with the views expressed in The Source Code Is The Design, but I would also point out that there is more to manufacturing than merely flicking a switch. And there is more to building an executable than merely running a compiler.
Quotes from me that people liked...
I regard it as a basic programmer's right that I should be able to, at any time, check out all the source code and build it. (thank you Steve Berczuk)
See also: Einstein Principle Object Oriented Programming Test First Design Unified Modeling Language Agile Modeling Rational Unified Process
Hey Caroline - re your comment above I used to work in manufacturing as a shop floor engineer, and part of my work involved Statistical Process Control. I haven't done much thinking about how techniques used in the manufacturing industry could support software engineering, but recent discussions in my regular web haunts have led me to believe that I should. More to follow I hope. - you might be interested in the Six Sigma Discussion page? Also, there is a mailing list on Six Sigma in Software Engineering - see groups.yahoo.com 
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-- Karen Smiley
See original on c2.com