Effective Software Project Management

Chapter 10. Incremental SDPM Strategy

I find the great thing in this world is, not where we stand, as it is in what direction we are moving.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes American physician and popular writer

Chapter Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you will be able to: Explain the Incremental SDPM strategy Have a high-level understanding of the Staged Delivery Waterfall model and the Feature-Driven Development model

The first variation from the linear models of Part II is the Incremental model, which is discussed in this part. Incremental models arise out of the customer’s need to deliver partial functionality at intermediate points along the software development timeline. For a variety of business reasons, customers cannot wait until the end of the development cycle to get their glimpse of the product and begin to derive business value. Market forces have put them in a position where they need to generate business value early. In many cases it might simply be a positioning strategy. They want to get to the market first and establish an early position for themselves.

The Incremental SDPM strategy is accomplished by “chunking” the functionality and features into meaningful parts so that each part offers marketable business value. Several increments might be defined so that the released product grows in functionality over time.