Software Development Life Cycle
Architectural Control
If your organization has individuals making long term decisions affecting future efficiency or capability, without those decisions being vetted and communicated, you have an architectural control problem. We advocate a system giving the enterprise the ability to understand the parameters of those decisions, utilizing those who have experienced pain from past decisions and can evaluate the potential consequences.
Definition and review of critical artifacts
Artifacts are the outputs of the development process. They include end user documentation, design documents, requirements, plans, and code. Critical artifacts are those that an organization requires as opposed to those that are optional. Critical artifacts will need some form of review process to at least verify that they are done, but more likely, they will need some form of content review by subject matter experts. If your organization is finding lots of defects late in the development cycle, you may not be spending enough time reviewing the content of these critical artifacts.
Value chain analysis and optimization
In this analysis we look at how the product is developed, where time is spent, and how much of each activity translates to something that the business really cares about, with priority to those things that the customer really cares about. If your organization is having difficulty getting the details done, there may be a problem in the value chain; an analysis can increase efficiency and employee productivity.
Dependency management
Many organizations develop very effectively when they are operating independently with no required inputs from other suppliers. We advocate light weight systems of identification and tracking of external dependencies so that individuals can have triggers to understand when they may need to re-plan to accommodate change, and to focus on their commitments to others.
Waterfall and Agile
We talk about this elsewhere on the site, but traditional and newer forms of software development each have their strengths and weaknesses. Your organization probably uses a combination of these already, even though it may be informal. We can help your organization identify what will work best.