Before you commit to the BDUF (Big Design Up Front) philosophy of
software development, I recommend you take a look at XP/Agile and
their associated practices. There is a lot of extremism
associated with XP, but underneath the shouting there are some
very valid concepts (IMHO). For example, I've found Test-Driven
Development (TDD) to have made a tremendous difference in the
stability of my released code. The Planning Game, User stories,
short iterative cycles have also proved valuable. Some adherents
will claim unless you are doing all 12 principles of XP you
aren't doing XP, which may be so, but I've found there is still
value in adopting the pieces that provide immediate value. Plus,
XP/Agile is a philosophy, not just practices, and by introducing
some practices first, philosophical objections to XP/Agile might
be more easily persuaded. Since you're starting from scratch and
appear to have management behind you, I think you are in a good
position to make XP/Agile work for you.
Just my $.02.
Dave Jones
NetEffect
At 12:09 PM 3/3/04 -0800, you wrote:
>I'm taking the "opportunity to excel" here at work and trying to
>bring some order to our web application development. For the
>last year we have been a team of two experienced CF developers,
>the previous year there was only one. Pretty much working ad
>hock on projects as they came along with little formal
>documentation. A single developer was pretty much completely
>responsible for each project. This has worked well enough for
>the mostly smallish projects we have done to date.
>
>Success has lead to more confidence by management and they are
>beginning to authorize more ambitious projects that will be
>beyond the scope of what a single developer can do in a
>reasonable amount of time. Cool stuff with 1+ man years of development.
>
>To accommodate these projects our team is expanding. We are
>adding 3 junior CF developers to the team. I believe we need to
>grow up and become more professional. Start applying a
>standard, formal software development process. Allowing
>multiple team members with different skill levels to work on
>these large projects.
>
>What I'm looking for are Software Life Cycle documentation
>templates, preferably free. When I've tried to Google for this
>stuff I only find examples that somebody wants to sell me (or
>even more costly entire consulting packages). I'm hoping some
>of you may have worked, or better yet managed, larger teams
>responsible for creating ColdFusion web applications and are
>willing and able to share some templates for Requirements,
>Design, Detailed Design type documentation or maybe know of a
>good resource where I might get these type of templates.
>
>Also any nice suggestions for basic information on web
>application project management would be most appreciated. I've
>had overviews of analysis and design in classes, read about why
>formal processes good in many places, but this will be the first
>time I've ever tried to be anything like a "senior" developer
>after some seven years of mostly solo and duet work.
>
>scary, Scary, SCARY thought on many levels.
>
>Thanks for reading my combination plea/rant.
>Eternal thanks for any information.
>
>--------------
>Ian Skinner
>Web Programmer
>BloodSource
>www.BloodSource.org
>Sacramento, CA
>
>"C code. C code run. Run code run. Please!"
> - Cynthia Dunning
>
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