Managing complex software development projects is about efficient utilization of resources,
risk management, accurate estimation of budgets and
timelines, experienced selection of appropriate
technologies, and scheduling feature development to meet
time-to-market requirements. Risk is a reality in every
project; Yaksha Informatics iterative methodology for software
development is designed specifically to mitigate risk.
The most important question to answer before starting product
development is: Why is this product needed in the
marketplace? The answer to this question constitute the
business objectives of the product that should drive its
entire lifecycle. A software product's development
lifecycle is comprised of four facets:
- Requirements: What features will the product have?
- Design: How will the product offer these features?
- Coding: How will the features be coded and unit
tested?
- Testing and delivery: How will the product be
tested and delivered to customers?
These four facets are managed by a project plan that
determines when the software product will offer the
required features.
In a traditional Waterfall lifecycle model, the
project plan organizes the four phases in a strict
serial order. A lot of time is spent up front to define
and analyze requirements and to complete the design of
the target system before a line of code is written. This
model does not handle changes in requirements or design
well. In addition, it creates an artificial separation
between business analysts, architects, designers, and
programmers, leading to the risk of miscommunication and
divergence between the business objectives and vision of
a software product and its implementation.
Using an Iterative lifecycle model, the four facets
of a software product are integrated so that business
objectives drive the entire process, and the
requirements and design are continuously refined while
the code evolves. The project plan arranges the
development into small releases, and mandates continuing
integration of all coded components, incremental builds,
and periodic validation of refined requirements and
design. By doing so, it encourages a shared ownership of
the product among business analysts, software
architects, designer, programmers, and testers; this
shared ownership reduces the risk of miscommunication
and divergence. It also enables continuing refinement
and integration to avoid any unpleasant surprises just
before the delivery date.
The Benefits of Yaksha Informatics Iterative Methodology are the
following:
- Quick feedback loop from business stakeholders to
engineering back to business stakeholders
- Rapid software product conceptualization and
materialization through prototyping
- Ability to refine requirements and design, and
handle changes in both in the early phases of a
product lifecycle
- Focus on getting the highest priority features and
the highest risk features implemented as fast as
possible
- Ability to validate pieces of design
incrementally, providing continuous analysis and
mitigating the risks
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