Key Success Criterions in Software Development

Software Development is still a heuristic process affected by many internal and external parameters. Many books are written in order to make this sort of craftsmanship more deterministic. The outcome may vary. I really like to define 4 (four) key objectives at the beginning of a project, either software or system development. Our brains are filled up with too much information; so four (4) might be feasible to keep in mind:

• Tame complexity: complexity kills any system; over-engineering leads to a system that is not maintainable any more and just extensible by wrappers and such nasty type of things
• Requirement Management: make sure that a proper requirement management is in place; either by using the well-known (and rarely used thoroughly) principles [complete, traceable, testable, …] or by newer, agile processes
• Software & System Architecture: a well defined and described architecture must be in place and communicated to the whole team
• Plan for change and failure: we live in a world of constant change, and the same is true for a software projects; this must be addressed in our way of creating software; in addition, failure is an option, complex system are hard to comprehend and error-prone; we must accept this and should strive to develop a strategy to deal with this fact in an open manner