SSA 2013 Software Development Lifecycle (and how to make the best of it) Mono d.o.o.

“Natural” Phases of a Software Project by Scott Guthrie  Enthusiasm  Disillusionment  Panic  Search for the Guilty  Punishment of the Innocent  Praise and Honors for Non-Participants

It does not have to be that way…  Do you use source control?  Can you make a build in one step?  Do you make daily builds?  Do you have a bug database?  Do you fix bugs before writing new code?  Do you have an up-to-date schedule?  Do you have a spec?  Do programmers have quiet working conditions?  Do you use the best tools money can buy?  Do you have testers?  Do new candidates write code during their interview?  Do you do hallway usability testing? Joel Spolsky’s 12 steps to better code,

A bit of history Waterfall software development manifesto Software development can be equated to any other engineering task. We believe software development projects can be effectively managed by:  Understanding and writing specifications that define how the software will look and what it will do  Performing in-depth analysis and design work before estimating development costs  Ensuring software developers follow the specifications  Testing the software after implementation to make sure it works as specified, and delivering the finished result to the user  That is, if the specification is of sufficient detail, then the software will be written such that it will satisfy the customer, will be within budget, and will be delivered on time Or will it?

Waterfall explained

What’s wrong with it?  "I’ll Know it When I See It”  Software development is more like new product development than manufacturing  Software development is far behind more traditional engineering fields in terms of development methods  70% of software projects using this methodology fail to meet their objectives.  The fail rate of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is 34%

Project management triangle

Agile manifesto We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools  Working software over comprehensive documentation  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation  Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more

How it works

When will the project end?  Burndown chart with velocity

Must haves!  Testing, especially  Unit testing  Functional testing  Continuous integration to avoid integration hell (“but it worked on my machine!”)

System Requirements Doc

Wireframing: MockFlow

How it ended up…

More tools…  Source control  Bug and issue tracking

All your bugs in one place

Listen to your users  Jobsboard v1 vs v2

Track the time spent: Toggl

Lessons learned  Outsource everything that is not core to the business. The leanest companies will identify as few core competencies as possible, and outsource everything.  85% of all developer time must be spent on business-specific logic. Do not reinvent the wheel! ( management/ e8 ) management/ e8  Know your stuff! ( re/why-your-software-development-process- is-broken/d/d-id/ ) re/why-your-software-development-process- is-broken/d/d-id/

Questions?  Each company is different, and there are no universal recipes for success, but let us know what you need – we might able to help.