[thelist] software development process...

[Ken Schaefer]

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From: "bruce" <bedouglas at earthlink.net>
Subject: [thelist] software development process...


: thought we'd toss this out to see what repsonses we get...
: we're developing a quick/rough guideline to kind of establish
: a "software development process"...
:
: we're interested to see what others have kind of established,
: or used as a basic process. the process can be for
: small/large projects....
:
: we're also interested if you have pointers to sites that
: provide actual software development processes, or
: steps to the process.
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What's wrong with the myriad of methodologies that's already out there?
Waterfall, Reducing Risk, Evolving Prototype, etc, etc.

Steve McConnell's (Rapid Software Development) book covers a lot of them
briefly
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556159005/
A dedicated project management (or systems analysis/design) book would
probably cover them in more depth.

Certainly one thing I've taken away from every project management course
I've been on: there's no such thing as the "magic bullet" development
methodology. You need lots of methodologies, and choose the one that fits
the project's needs/constraints.

For example, the Waterfall methodology is no use if the user doesn't know
what they want. For example, if the user is specifying a system for the
first time ever (they have no experience in requesting system development),
then Waterfall is probably unsuitable.

For a project that is low on the business priority list, you probably need a
methodology that will build those parts of the application that can be built
quickly using your RAD tools, and which puts other parts as optional extras
to be done later on (because low priority projects will be time and resource
constrained).

Perhaps you can give us more info on what are trying to develop, and we
could recommend something based on that?

Cheers
Ken