Software Development Processes: How to create great software, doing it right the first time and keep your sanity

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Software Development Processes How to create
great software, doing it right the first time and
keep your sanity

• Matt Howland
• Francesca Noli

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Agenda

• Software development processes case studies
• Traditional
• Consulting/Services
• Release Timelines
• Best practices
• Development Roles
• Employee vs. consultant
• Roles in a development organization
• QA

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Software dev process traditional

• Enterprise Software
• release cycle is often 12-18 months and involves
  between 15 and 50 products (family pack vs.
  Division or Applications)
• MRD (Market Requirement Document)
• FDD (Functional Requirement Document)
• TDD (Technical Requirement Document)
• Code
• Unit Test
• Acceptance
• QA
• Release
• Changes after formal hand off to dev (post FDD)
  through change control requests reviewed by SVP
  of development

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Software development process Extreme Development

• I.E. Oracle used in some divisions informally
• Same release length as traditional development
• Used internally to the development organization
  (no QA or release impact)
• Developer and Product manager meet every morning
  for 30 min to decide which function to implement
  that day
• Product manager gives feedback on previous day
  code

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Software Development Process Start Up

• Release every 6-10 weeks
• Vision or Product Direction from CEO and VPs
• Detailed product roadmap from product management
• MRDs/PRDs (Market Requirement Document/ Product
  Requirement Document)
• Functional Specs
• Development (Integrated Research and Development)
• QA
• Regression testing
• Release

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Software Development Process Consulting/Services

• Largely client defined/negotiated release
  schedule
• JAD (Joint application development) Sessions
• PRD
• Functional Spec
• Integration/Migration Plan
• Negotiated client milestones/deliverables
• Integrated QA

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Software Release Schedule

• One major challenge is that you are juggling
  multiple releases at any time
• Example January 2006
• Release 2 is ready to go out (end of qa)
• Heavy on dev to fix critical issues
• Heavy on QA and release to package it
• Release 3 is code complete and ready to be
  handed off to QA
• Heavy on development to wrap up the code
• Heavy on QA to complete their test cases
• Release 4 is in planning phase
• Heavy on product manager to complete PRDs
• While this is all going on, the customer is still
  on release 1
• And this is the good news because on license
  based software, you dont even know what release
  your customer is on

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Sample Timeline

• January
• customer on 1
• QA on 2
• Dev on 3
• PM on 4

February customer on 2 QA on 3 Dev on 3 and 4 PM
on 4 and 5
March customer on 2 QA on 3 Dev on 4 PM on 5
April customer on 3 QA on 4 Dev on 4 and 5 PM on
5 and 6
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Best Practices

• It all starts with good peoplebut once you have
  good people you still need more
• Unit tests done by dev and PM before QA starts
• Additional automated/integrated unit test for
  complex processes (JUnit, NUnit)
• Strong process for QA and release
• No changes after PRD hand off
• Document, document, document (includes robust
  commenting as well as formal document both user
  and technical)
• (JDoc, NDoc are great time savers)
• Customer Driven feature set
• Peer code reviews
• Revision Managment
• Up front design (UML, Functional Spec)

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Development Role Traditional Employee

• Perks
• Project Ownership
• Training on New Technologies
• Camaraderie
• Advancement to roles outside of Engineering,
  Management, Product Management, Etc.
• Traditional employee benefits
• Downside
• More distance between you and the customer
• Less flexibility

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Development Role Consultant

• Perks
• Guru status
• More flexible schedules
• Extensive customer interaction
• Pay
• Downside
• Less Project Ownership
• Career advancement and training are your
  responsibility and will have to be actively
  sought out.
• No traditional benefits package

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Development Roles

• Customer Product Management
• Architect
• User Interface
• Dev manager/Developer
• QA
• Release
• Documentation

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QA