Fast-to-Market Product Development
In the March issue of Kuadriga News, we discussed why we are so fond of SCRUM for offshore development: it fosters high productivity and keeps geographically distributed teams focused. We are no fanatics and SCRUM is not a fix-it-all for all situations.
"First things first" - and any team needs to know its shared objectives and constraints before setting off. And SCRUM is just not very good at defining those. Thus, we have based the initial phases of our Product Development Methodology on a modification of Waterfall rather than SCURM.
Our approach is to:
• Share the client business and product vision
• Create a well-defined and thought-out top-level architecture - before development starts
• Work in iterations ("sprints") of 3-4 weeks with clear and well-defined objectives and priorities
• Flexibility is allowed at the beginning of each sprint
• Testing is integral to each sprint ensuring the quality of the end-product
In this manner, development process remains should open to activities on the business side (financing, marketing, sales). At the same time, the process aims straight towards product launch without unnecessary uncertainties due. Especially frequent releases of working versions of the product are good at validating the shared goals.