A method to managing...
Software development may yet be an art. But like any art, it is defined, at least in part, by its craft and its disciplines.
Perhaps the most crucial of these disciplines is project management–the expertise that insures prompt delivery of robust product in the face of constantly evolving requirements.
In our experience, the greatest challenge to managing software development in the Internet era lies in defining the development methodologies, the repeatable, predictable processes that obtain the best of each resource and of each hour of project time.
The trouble is that traditional software methodologies tend to be so linear, so rigid, and so copiously rule-based as to be too unwieldy for the demands of real world programming. Every IT manager has had the experience of a project whose deliverable became obsolete in the course of its development.
The fact is, the very markets that information technology has created can now change at a pace outstripping that of the technology itself. For a development methodology to be viable, it must be flexible and responsive to end customers' needs. Businesses can't stop doing business to put in new software, and development can't restart with every change in the markets.
That is not to say that the only viable methodology is no method at all. The goal is a process rigorous enough to assure high quality, yet adaptable enough to meet the demands of a constantly changing marketplace. More to the point, we must discard the notion that discovery and design belong solely at beginning of a project and that testing and quality assurance can wait until project's end.