A better software development process • Hacker News Board

Post by swhnorton » Sat, Jul 21, 2007, 3:44 AM UTC

I recently joined a growing company that, among other things, builds web applications.

The development process boils down to:

1) Determining Requirements

2)Building exact specifications complete with descriptions of functionality and mockups

3) Developing the software to match the specifications

4) Creating a QA test plan to break the SW and ensure that it matches the specification exactly

5)making necessary changes to both the specification and software

6)Rolling out the product to users

Being a loather of redundancy and having a personal project/startup background, this process strikes me as antiquated and arcane. Surely there must be a better way to develop software. What are some of the workflows that work for you to create great features when you've got more than just a couple people hacking? What can startups teach scaling companies in this light?

Post by willarson » Sat, Jul 21, 2007, 4:00 AM UTC

I agree that seems kind of stiff, especially for a smaller company that is developing for the web. Getting Real is a quick (and free to read online) book by 37signals that helps focus on a very light development process http://getreal.37signals.com/ . Reading it might give you some material for suggesting ways to improve your company's workflow (and coming from a fairly credible source).

Many web startups have come to resemble the open source development pattern: release early, release often, don't plan too far into the future (your assumptions will probably change by then). I think these are all good ideas: you get feedback sooner from real users, which allows you to focus on providing functionality that your users actually want (or at least think they want).

In general I think the extreme programming propaganda has a lot of good advice, but I don't know if any large companies have successfully applied them to teams of more than 10-20 people.