Just-in-time
Apply just-in-time manufacturing principle to software development. A software development team should capture the requirements at a high level, as needed, just-in-time for each feature to be developed and deployed. In manufacturing you don’t want unnecessary parts cluttering your warehouse but also dont want to stop your assembly line because necessary components have not arrived.
Software Development requirements are ideally visual and should include the absolute minimum required to enable development and testing to proceed with reasonable efficiency. The rationale for this is to minimize the time spent on anything that doesn’t actually form part of the end product.
Just-in-time does not mean wait until the last possible moment. Simply, don’t introduce the radio before the chassy is built. We all want music in our automobile but there is no point in discussing surround sound before the engine and wheels.
Your Software Development project should be more flexible than more traditional development methodologies, Efficient Software Development has quite a bit of rigor and should be based on the fairly structured approach of lean manufacturing as pioneered by Toyota and many other manufacturers.
Software Development teams can build better products if they have a reasonably clear idea of the overall requirements before setting out on development, so that incorrect design decisions don’t lead the team down dead ends and also so a sensible investment case can be made to get the project funded.
Any requirements captured at the outset should be captured at a high level and in a visual format as a storyboard of the user interface. At this stage, requirements should be understood enough to determine the outline scope of the product and produce high level budgetary estimates and no more.
Ideally, Development teams capture these high level requirements in real time Hosted Environments where users can continue to work while working together in a highly collaborative desktops so that all team members understand the requirements as well as each other. It is not necessarily the remit of one person, like the Business Analyst in more traditional projects, to gather the requirements independently and write them all down; it’s a joint activity of the team that allows everyone to contribute, challenge and understand what is needed and why it is important.
Break requirements down into small bite-size pieces called User Stories. These are fundamentally similar to Use Cases but are lightweight and more simplistic in their nature.
A Development team (including a key user or product owner from the business) visualizes requirements in white boarding sessions and creates storyboards (sequences of screen shots, visuals, sketches or wire frames) to show roughly how the solution will look and how the user’s interaction will flow in the solution. There should not be a lengthy requirements document or specification unless there is an area of complexity that really warrants it. Otherwise the storyboards are just annotated and only where necessary.
A common approach amongst Development teams is to represent each requirement, user case or user story, on a card and use a T-card system or Viseo to allow stories to be moved around easily as the user/business representative on the project adjusts priorities.
To achieve this, requirements are broken down into very small pieces. The advantage this has over lengthy documentation is that it’s extremely visual and tangible; you can stand around the T-card system and whiteboard discussing progress, issues and priorities.
The time frame of a Development project is fixed, whereas the features are variable. Should it be necessary to change priority or add new requirements into the project, the user/business representative physically has to remove a comparable amount of work from scope before they can place the new card into the project.
This is a big contrast to a common situation where the business owner sends numerous new and changed requirements by email and/or verbally, somehow expecting the new and existing features to still be delivered in the original time frames. Traditional project teams that don’t control changes can end up with the dreaded scope of work creep, one of the most common reasons for software development projects to fail.
Successful development teams, by contrast, accept change; in fact they expect it. They manage change by fixing the timescales and trading-off features.
Cards can of course be backed up by documentation as appropriate, but always the principle of successful development is to document the bare minimum amount of information that will allow a feature to be developed, and always broken down into very small units.
Using successful management practices, requirements and features are broken down into tasks of no more than 16 hours (i.e. 2 working days) and preferably no more than 8 hours, so progress can be measured objectively on a daily basis.
To ensure the success of your project management methodology, make sure all items are deliverable rather than activities or tasks. You can see a deliverable and “kick the tires”, in order to judge its quality and completeness. A task you cannot.
Software Development Services
User Involvement – Team Participation – Time Management – Just In Time
Delivery Life Cycle – Delivery Frequency – Project Completion – 80/20 Rule – Testing
For more detailed information about how our Managed Application Development and Hosting can help your business
Contact Application Solution Providers at 866-764-8324, Send an email, Submit an Information Request
Application Solution Providers, Inc. 866-764-8324
Any software can be installed, maintained, and securely accessed from anywhere. Leverage the latest hosting technologies with a Digital Desktop.™ Consolidate and secure all your business applications and data in custom Hosted Environments.™
Your business applications and managed Application Hosting, Desktop Hosting, Web Hosting, Mail Hosting, Software as a Service (SaaS), Virtual Machines (VM), and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) saves time and money.
For managed Application Consulting, Development, Marketing, Hosting, Support, and Training
Call 866-764-8324 · Send an email · Submit an Information Request
