Effective Software Project Management

The Incremental SDPM Strategy

Incremental approaches must meet the same requirements as linear approaches. The goal and the solution must both be clearly defined. An incremental approach is chosen so that results can be delivered in stages over the life of the project. Figure 10-1 illustrates the generic Incremental SDPM strategy. Later in this chapter, I adapt it to the Staged Delivery Waterfall model and the Feature-Driven Development model.

Figure 10-1. Incremental SDPM strategy

Situations will arise where business value needs to be delivered early and often. In these cases the total solution is decomposed into “chunks” of deliverables. Each chunk provides enough functionality to be of business value in a production sense. These chunks are released sequentially until all functionality has been released to production status. These sequential releases offer opportunities to modify functionality in future increments.

Because Incremental SDPM strategies are found in Quadrant 1, their goal and solution must be clearly defined and documented as a condition for using the models described below. Figure 10-2 (Staged Delivery Waterfall model) and Figure 10-4 (Feature-Driven Development model) are two examples of incremental approaches. Both models require the complete documentation of requirements, functionality, and features.

For projects that otherwise would use a linear model but ...