（转贴）The Relevance Approach to Development

The Relevance Approach to Development

Over hundreds of projects, we have created a development method that works every time.

from  Relevance

Work together

The best software is written by small teams, with direct, daily access to business people. We use daily standups, biweekly iterations, email, chat, wikis, and anything else necessary to keep the team in sync.

Choose the sharpest tools

We use the sharpest tools available. On recent projects these tools have included Ruby, Rails, Mingle, Groovy, and AspectJ.

Commit to the lifecycle of a project

Developers often optimize the development phase, and then create huge costs in deployment and maintenance. We build software for best results through the entire project lifecycle.

Test-Driven Development

Untested code is legacy code, even if it was written yesterday. We use Test-Driven Development in conjunction with continuous integration and code coverage analysis to keep code healthy and ready to evolve.

Share knowledge

Knowledge in only one head might as well not exist. Relevance uses pair programming, code review, and team rotation to spread knowledge through the entire project team, and beyond.

Deliver small, complete pieces

If your project is six months long, you should not have to wait three months to see progress. Relevance delivers working software in two-week iterations. We track project velocity so you know how much your project will cost, and when it will be completed.

Embrace changing requirements

Most software teams fear changing requirements. This is unfortunate, because changing requirements often represent the best opportunity to add value. Relevance will work with you to re-evaluate priorities at every iteration, so that the next piece of functionality you add can always be the highest-valued one.

Succeed every time

Skilled programmers can succeed once. To succeed every time, you need a standard process. We collect data and create feedback loops both within and across projects to ensure success.