Good and Bad Practices

Best Practices in Software Development

1. Develop Iteratively

• Critical risks are resolved before making large investments
• Initial iterations enable early user feedback
• Testing and integration are continuous
• Objective milestones provide short term focus

2. Manage Requirements

• Requirements are dynamic - expect them to change during software development
• User's own understanding of the requirements evolves over time
• Gain agreement with user on what the system should do and not how
• Maintain forward and backward traceability of requirements

3. Use Component Based Architecture

• Using components permits reuse
• Choice of thousands of commercially available components
• Improved maintainability and extensibility
• Promotes clean division of work among teams of developers

4. Visually Model Software

• Visual modeling improves our ability to manage software complexity
• Capture the structure and behavior of components
• Hide or expose details as appropriate for the task
• Promote unambiguous communication

5. Verify Software Quality

• What is quality? - The characteristic of producing a product which meets or exceeds agreed upon requirements by some agreed upon objective measures.
• Software problems are 100 to 1000 times more costly to find and repair after deployment
• Develop test suites for each iteration and test for -
• Functionality
• Reliability
• Performance

6. Control Changes to Software

• Without explicit control parallel development degrades to chaos
• Decompose the architecture into subsystems and assign responsibility of each subsystem to a team. Establish secure workspaces for each team i.e. each team is isolated from changes made in other workspaces.
• Establish an enforceable change control mechanism where
• Change requests are prioritized
• Impact of the change request is assessed
• Plan put in place to introduce change in a particular iteration

Disadvantages of Teamwork

1. Delays

• When generating new ideas, the team will have to discuss them. This requires a meeting.
• The meeting should have a purpose and a goal so that it is efficient and not waste the time of team members.
• Unfortunately, team meetings can often become social gathering, if not managed properly. It causes delays.

2. Conflict

• After forming a team, conflict is a common result.
• Cognitive conflict results from problems related to differences of opinion.
• Affective conflict results from personal differences between the team members.
• Latter is more destructive, resulting in arguments, hostility and resentment.

3. Decision Process

• One person can make decisions more quickly than a team.
• The needs input from several people can prolong the decision-making process and complicate making even the simplest decisions.
• Consensus can become part of the team’s culture. This can stifle creativity and innovation.

4. Productivity

• Productivity may diminish because of several reasons.
• A period of adjustment may occur after forming new teams.
• The adjustment may require training and can slow down productivity.
• Members of a team may not participate equally.
• A member of a team is given to a part of the task to complete and may not complete in the required time because of his/her unwillingness.
• It is difficult to identify the weak performers and address the problems accordingly.
• Many teams are not conducive to using imagination and restrain individuals who do not work well within a team.
• Some people prefer to work on their own.

References

• http://www.slideshare.net/shannielmorgan/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-teamwork
• http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-teams-organization-20531.html