Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December 9, 2012

The Software Project Lifecycle

All projects follow the same lifecycle pattern, or theme. What varies from project to project is the amount of time between stages. Embryonic projects consist of presentations, problem statements, solutions, Slack workspaces, and other forms of optimism. We can do this! Infant projects consist of proof of concept prototypes built by at most three developers. There is no error handling. Baby projects have a source code repository and programming guidelines. It might be possible to run it on your own laptop. Fat chance. Toddler projects have automated builds and unit tests. They “go live,” always too soon. Tween projects have bug tracking systems. Users are unpaid testers. Teenage projects have a release candidate that evolves, usually much longer than anyone expects, into the sacred “one dot oh.” Most projects fail during this stage due to infighting or insufficient funds. The teenager ages into adulthood via 1.0 patch releases and then eventually into 2.0. Quality and revenue a