For large-scale initiatives, a software development plan is an absolute must.
Whether your organization chooses to work with an agency to develop this product or handles the full project in-house, a complete, structured, and precise software development plan is essential for strategizing and allocating resources.
Management can assess the different workloads and timescales of each person engaged, whether they are developers or stakeholders, with a proper software development plan, and have a sufficient benchmark upon which to measure actual project progress.
However, as useful as a detailed design is, this only reflects one point of view on the project—and an incomplete one at that.
A LARGE-SCALE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PLAN’S RISKS
Managers that rely solely on the software development strategy for managing a major project run the danger of overlooking critical planning, workflow, and personnel difficulties, such as:
Almost all initial estimations are incorrect.
Timing is a victim of even the most rigorous business and requirements analysis. The first iteration of a software development strategy can benefit from initial estimates. Your Project Management Office, on the other hand, will need to adopt a two-stage estimation procedure if you want more precision.
Because your initial assessment and the overall plan are being produced at almost the same time, user stories and modules are being added piecemeal, you’ll require two (or more) estimating stages.
Additional estimates will be able to examine the project holistically and better find and evaluate ties between work modules—links that will complicate the plan and increase the amount of effort required—after the original plan has been developed.
There may also be business requirements and third-party integration concerns that aren’t discovered until the project is far advanced. Once such difficulties are identified, a re-evaluation is required to maintain project goals and planning realistic.
The broader the scope, the larger the error margin.
Software development projects should leave room for mistake, but we’ve discovered that most firms underestimate the demand for software on the smaller end (underestimating the time necessary), whereas they should instead leave greater space for error.
The greater a software project is, the more possible failure points there are, the more intricate the dependencies are, and the more layers of communication you’ll have to push through to complete it. Everything adds up to plans that are sure to fall short of any deadlines you set, particularly if you don’t use a multi-stage estimation method.
At a wider scale, rework affects numerous modules.
When a software project has a problem, the rework might readily influence other modules. This is applicable towards both big and small initiatives, but the latter’s consequences and costs are significantly greater. It is critical to comprehend this influence in order to properly manage risk.
If there are numerous teams, each in charge of their very own module, the process may be slowed even more. The team in charge of the modules with the initial problem now has to coordinate various repairs with other teams. If the team responsible for designing the application logic for a multi-tier application needs to make modifications, the teams are responsible for the application and presentation layers must wait until the rework is finished.
Silos are more likely to form.
Business analysis, development, and testing are the three working disciplines that make up any well-organized software project.
These specialties are each handled by a few core personnel in smaller initiatives (and maybe even some overlap). To cover all of the tasks on larger projects, additional workers in each discipline are needed.
However, this system runs the risk of developing silos, in which one group or discipline becomes so engrossed in its own activities that it no longer communicates or collaborates effectively with the others. Work has become competitive rather than collaborative, and animosity has grown as a result of the bottleneck. Testers, for example, regard developers as nitpickers who slow down the project, whereas developers see testers as sloppy who produce rushed work.
What’s the end result? Longer delivery times, greater rework, and missed deadlines are all possible outcomes. There is also a significant danger of deliveries that do not work as intended or fail to meet the goal fully.
So, given the foregoing, does this imply that a software development strategy is pointless? Should management simply sketch out the idea in broad strokes or abandon it entirely?
Certainly not.
Decrease The Risk IN YOUR STRATEGY
Your software development strategy can still function if you take the following precautions to reduce your risks:
Work cells with many functions
Creating cross-functional work cells is one strategy to reduce the impact of silos. A cell is a small group made up of people from several disciplines. At any given time, a cell can be assigned more than one module, but they are solely responsible for whatever they are given.
The concept is that each cell will be allocated a functioning module or user story to complete. Because each cell is made up of people from many disciplines, it will be able to function independently without the bottlenecks that a classically segregated team would have.
In principle, thanks to the tight interaction of the members of each work cell, any feature being worked on will be correctly envisioned, built, and tested quickly. Silos are still a possibility, although they will have a minor influence if the work modules are appropriately built.
Which leads us to the next point:
Create work modules that are well-connected.
If you’re going to delegate work to a self-contained, cross-functional team, make sure you give them a well-defined set of tasks.
By that, I mean duties that are closely related to one another, either in terms of theme or functionality. Allocating one team responsibility for a whole “message” functionality, rather than giving the text module to one team and the voice module to another, produces the best outcomes. The former is far more likely to produce in a user interface that is intuitive, whereas the latter would be a chaotic collection of features.
But keep in mind that you’re creating a one unified product or solution, not a collection of discrete features. Configuration management necessitates collaboration with other cross-functional teams. As the project evolves, make sure the software development strategy takes this into consideration.
Knowledge coordination and social capital
Your project is a complicated undertaking that will necessitate a wide range of skills, specialties, and degrees of knowledge to complete successfully. A software product growth plan will never be able to confront all of the concerns or scenarios that emerge since no single person has all of the necessary information.
This is when social capital enters the picture. The combined wisdom of your entire team’s network is known as social capital, and it may be utilized at any time to help its members.
By fostering a cooperative and consultative project environment, management can assist the PMO in leveraging social capital. Establish communication tools for workgroups and project sites, such as Confluence or Sharepoint for document management, JIRA or Trello for task management, and Slack or Microsoft Teams for team communication. Encourage the creation of an extensive and easily available internal knowledge base that employees may use to share and explore information.
Don’t let the plan control you.
This appears to be counterintuitive. After all, what good is a plan if you don’t stick to it?
While your plan might serve as a solid starting point for your initial goals, you must also ensure that it matches what the team can accomplish.
When your PMO requests that the plan be updated, inquire as to why. Perhaps they conducted a second analysis (as previously said) and need to revise their initial figures. Alternatively, someone on the executive team may have revised the requirements (scope creep), resulting in a significant shift in timetables. It could also signify that there has been a staffing shift, and your strategy has to be updated to reflect the current resources.
Whatever the reason, it is your job to both your PMO and the rest of the management team to employ an ambitious yet realistic software development strategy. If this necessitates altering the strategy in the event of a big change, so be it.
In conclusion
To gather project requirements, clarify the development plan, and manage project teams, large-scale projects require a software development plan. While this is an important document, prudent managers should be cognizant of what it does not reveal.
Your project planning will not take into account staffing concerns, aggressive targets, or inefficient work methods. These lingering software development process issues will have to be investigated independently, either by yourself or someone from the PMO, if you want to ensure success.
However, if you really can account for and mitigate these hidden risks, your big projects will result in software products that are far more capable to complete as expected—and within the schedule and budget constraints. So, the next moment your co-executives in the boardroom inquire about the project, you may respond with your most positive and confident tone.
