Our Development Overview

1. Development Process 

It is important to choose the appropriate development lifecycle for a given project because all other activities are derived from this process. A couple examples of this are the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and the extreme Programming (XP) methods. Having a well defined process is usually better than having none at all, and in many cases it is less important what process is used, than how well it is executed.

2. Requirements

Gathering and agreeing on requirements is fundamental to a successful project. This does not necessarily imply that all requirements need to be fixed before any architecture, design, and coding are done, but it is important for the development team to understand what needs to be built. Quality requirements are broken up into two kinds: functional and non-functional. It is important to gather them because they have a major impact on the application architecture, design, and performance.

3. Design

Even with a good architecture, it is still possible to have a bad design. Many applications are either over-designed or under-designed. The two basic principles here are "Keep it Simple" and information hiding. For many projects, it is important to perform Object-Oriented Analysis and Design using UML. Code reuse is but one form of reuse and there are other kinds of reuse that can provide better productivity gains.

4. Architecture

Choosing the appropriate architecture for your application is key. You have to know what you are building on before you can start a project. Check the architecture of the target. Read as much as you can about the ins and outs of the platform and note any pitfalls before you start your code. It will go a long way to heading off any bugs that might be 'show stoppers' later on.

5. Code Building 

Building the code is really just a small part of the total project effort even though it's what most people equate with the whole process since it's the most visible. Other pieces equally or even more important include what we have already gone over the above namely requirements, architecture, analysis, design, and testing. A best practice for building code involves daily builds and testing.

6. Peer Reviews

It is important to review other people's work. Experience has shown that problems are eliminated earlier this way and reviews are as effective or even more effective than testing. Any artifact from the development process is reviewed, including plans, requirements, architecture, design, code, and test cases. Peer reviews are helpful in trying to produce software quality at top speed.

7. Software Testing

Testing is an integral part of software development that needs to be planned. It is also important that testing is done proactively; meaning that test cases are planned before coding starts, and test cases are developed while the application is being designed and coded.

8. Performance Testing

Testing is usually the last resort to catch application defects. It is labor intensive and usually only catches coding defects. Architecture and design defects may be missed. One method to catch some architectural defects is to simulate load testing on the application before it is deployed and to deal with performance issues before they become problems.

9. Configuration Management

Configuration management involves knowing the state of all artifacts that make up your system or project, managing the state of those artifacts, and releasing distinct versions of a system. There is more to configuration management than just source control systems.

10. Quality And Defects Management

It is important to establish quality priorities and release criteria for the project so that a plan is constructed to help the team achieve quality software. As the project is coded and tested, the defect arrival and fix rate can help measure the maturity of the code. It is important that a defect tracking system is used that is linked to the source control management system. By using defect tracking, it is possible to gauge when a project is ready to release.

11. Deployment

Deployment is the final stage of releasing an application for users.

12. System Operations And Support

Without the operations or web services, you cannot deploy and support a new application. The support area is a vital factor to respond and resolve user problems. To ease the flow of problems, the support problem database is hooked into the application defect tracking system.

13. Data Migration

Most applications are not brand new, but are enhancements or rewrites of existing applications. Data migration from the existing data sources is usually a major project by itself. This is not a project for your junior programmers. It is as important as the new application. Usually the new application has better business rules and expects higher quality data. Improving the quality of data is a complex subject outside the scope of this article.

14. Project Management

Project management is key to a successful project. Many of the other best practice areas described are related to project management, and a good project manager is already aware of the existence of these best practices. Our recommended bible for project management is Rapid Development by Steve McConnell. Given the number of other checklists and tip sheets for project management, it is surprising how many project managers are not aware of them and do not apply lessons learned from previous projects, such as: "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." One way to manage a difficult project is through Milestones.