There are just 2 steps to create a software: creating it and checking how it goes.
If you came here to know something about Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), I can guarantee you that the relationship between that thing and the real world is basically non-existent.
Oh Come on! And what about requirement analysis, design, etc…?
They exist only in the mind of an accountant/project manager.
They are artifacts created to add more items to the list presented to a potential customer during the software quotation “dance”.
There is no analysis. Or put in a different way, while you create a software, you are continuously thinking/analyzing if what you are doing is the right thing.
For the pragmatic reader I am showing what happens in the real world:
| SDLC Phases | Real world |
| Initiation | Come on |
| System concept development | Are you kidding? |
| Planning | Managerial stuff(*) |
| Requirement Analysis | Creating |
| Design | Creating |
| Development | Creating |
| Integration and Test | Creating |
| Implementation | Creating |
| Operation and Maintenance | How it goes |
| Disposition | (How it goes?) Not so well |
(*) You’ll do anyway some planning, but leave that Gantt to your PM friend
We already know this: it is iterative… or incremental? Yeah, but I know it!
In my mind it has never been iterative. Probably chaotic is the right word. Fixing that chaos in my mind is the thing that made me want to study how to write a “successful software”.
I think “iterative” and “incremental” are pretty words chosen carefully to explain to an old man a new way to manage a software, but changed very little to someone who spent its life in writing software for real. People were not happy with the waterfall approach as much as they are not happy with anything else that does not allow their mind to create what is needed.
Did you hear about Kanban…
I didn’t apply Kanban in my career, but I know that Scrum is really difficult to apply.
When badly applied, that creative process is interrupted and your software start to become a secondary thing after all the rest.
I am pretty sure there are other ways to align a team if that is what you are looking for.
In summary
If you have to write a software, just create it and see how it goes.
If you have to write a software quotation, I fill your pain.