Straight from the Microsoft "Rapid Application Development" book..
Four Dimensions of Development Speed
- People
- Process
- Product
- Technology
People
Process + Product
Technology
1. People
Impacts software productivity and quality
The most effective practices leverage human potential not technology
Areas that effect peopleware:
o individual ability
o individual motivation
o overall team ability
o overall team motivation
Staffing for team projects: Five principals
o Job Talent
o Job matching
o Career progression
o Team balance
o Misfit elimination
o Other: design ability, language experience, machine and environment experience, and applications area experience
Team Organization
o Match project size
o Match product attributes
o Match schedule goals
Motivation
o Is your strongest ally on RAD Projects
2. Process
Management methodologies and technical methodologies
o neglect to process will cause developers to work inefficiently and at cross purposes when there isn’t a need
Rework avoidance
o avoid doing things twice (get accurate requirements)
Quality assurance
o assure that product has acceptable level of quality
o detect errors at the stage when they are least time consuming to fix
Development fundamentals
o source control
o requirements management
o design
o construction
o configuration management
Risk management
o merge schedule related tasks
Resource targeting
o effectively focused
o contribute to overall productivity
o Best practices: productive offices, time box development, accurate scheduling and voluntary overtime
Lifecycle planning
o lifecycle models make it easier to identify and organize the many activities of a software project.
Customer orientation
o put yourself on same same side as customer
o best practices that help with this: staged releases, evolutionary delivery, evolutionary prototyping, throw away prototyping, and principle negotiation.
3. Product
Reduce product feature set: reduction in project scheduling
Product size and characteristics offer opportunities to cut development time
4. Technology