Evolutionary Project Management Methods

One of the magic bullets inevitably emerging from various successful software development methodologies is Evolutionary delivery. This is a development project organization technique characterised by:

• Many, very short development cycles.
• Every development cycle is a complete waterfall (requirements - architecture - design - realisation - test - delivery), delivering a functional product to a stakeholder for response.
• Criteria for choosing which features should be implemented in any cycle, using priority selection:
  • Most important requirements first
  • Highest risks first
  • Most educational or supporting for the development first
  • Synchronise with other developments (e.g. hardware development)

The result is solid control of development projects, faster results, better quality, less stressed developers and happy customers.

Note that soon after the start of the project at the end of every cycle, we have a useful product, 100% working, although not all 100% of the final requirements will be in. This gives your customer a choice for Time to Market:

• In the conventional waterfall method, also called "Big Bang delivery", the complete product may be 80% done at the end of the delivery time agreed (normally, software is never delivered on time). In this case the customer has no choice but to wait. There is no finished product when he needs it.
• With Evolutionary delivery, at the delivery time agreed, the product may still be 80% done. However, we have a working product, with 80% of the most important functionality in. Note that not all requirements have the same importance. Now the customer has a choice: Put the product on the market now, with the most important functionality in, or allow some time to add all or a selection of the final bells and whistles. The customer can even choose to go to market with less functionality at an earlier time.
• So, with the conventional waterfall, the customer has no choice and may loose market leverage. With Evolutionary delivery, he has several options to tune his Time to Market.