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Managing complex
software development projects is about efficient
utilization of resources, risk management, accurate
estimation of budgets and timelines, experienced selection
of appropriate technologies, and scheduling feature
development to meet time-to-market requirements. Risk is a
reality in every project; DIL’s iterative methodology for
software development is designed specifically to mitigate
risk.
The most important
question to answer before starting
product development is: Why is this product
needed in the marketplace? The answer to this question
constitutes the business objectives of the product that
should drive its entire lifecycle. A software product's
development lifecycle is comprised of four facets:
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Requirements:
What features will the product have?
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Design: How
will the product offer these features?
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Coding: How
will the features be coded and unit tested?
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Testing and
delivery: How will the product be tested and delivered
to customers?
These four facets
are managed by a project plan that determines when the
software product will offer the required features.
In a traditional
Waterfall lifecycle model, the project plan organizes the
four phases in a strict serial order. A lot of time is spent
up front to define and analyze requirements and to complete
the design of the target system before a line of code is
written. This model does not handle changes in requirements
or design well. In addition, it creates an artificial
separation between business analysts, architects, designers,
and programmers, leading to the risk of miscommunication and
divergence between the business objectives and vision of a
software product and its implementation.
Using an Iterative
lifecycle model, the four facets of a software product are
integrated so that business objectives drive the entire
process, and the requirements and design are continuously
refined while the code evolves. The project plan arranges
the development into small releases, and mandates continuing
integration of all coded components, incremental builds, and
periodic validation of refined requirements and design. By
doing so, it encourages a shared ownership of the product
among business analysts, software architects, designer,
programmers, and testers; this shared ownership reduces the
risk of miscommunication and divergence. It also enables
continuing refinement and integration to avoid any
unpleasant surprises just before the delivery date.
The Benefits of
DIL’s Iterative Methodology are the following:
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Quick feedback
loop from business stakeholders to engineering back to
business stakeholders
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Rapid software
product conceptualization and materialization through
prototyping
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Ability to
refine requirements and design, and handle changes in
both in the early phases of a product lifecycle
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Focus on
getting the highest priority features and the highest
risk features implemented as fast as possible
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Ability to
validate pieces of design incrementally, providing
continuous analysis and mitigating the risks
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